The House on Monday held a memorial for former state Rep. Betty Neale, who died Oct. 12, 2018, at the age of 91. 

Neale served 18 years in the House, from 1975 to 1992, and was the first woman to hold the title of Speaker Pro Tem, in her last two years in the House.

Her House District 14 included Denver and Arapahoe counties, making her one of the last Republicans to represent southeastern Denver. 

Neale was born in 1927 in Hiawatha, Kansas, and moved to Denver in 1958. She began her service to the General Assembly as a House assignable clerk, learning the ropes of a lawmaker’s life for several years before she ran for the House, according to former lawmakers who spoke at Monday’s memorial. After her service in the house ended, Neale lobbied on behalf of the city and county of Denver for nearly the next two decades, retiring in 2012.

Neale married Dory J. Neale, Sr., and had three children. A son, Dory Neale Jr. and her former husband both preceded her in death. She is survived by two sons, Scott and Steven, and four grandchildren. 

Among those who paid tribute to Neale on Monday: former Senate Majority Leader and Rep. Tom Blickensderfer, Sens. Norma Anderson, Rob Hernandez, Bill Schroeder and Penfield Tate, and former Reps. Bill Kaufmann, Wellington and Wilma Webb, Jeanne Adkins and Dorothy Gottlieb, who succeeded Neale in the House.

Former state Rep. and U.S. Rep. and now-Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman spoke of Neale, with whom he served. In 1990, they served together on the Business Affairs and Labor Committee. “I was one of Betty’s boys,” along with former Reps. Tim Foster, Jeff Shoemaker, Tony Grampsas and Steve Arveschoug, Coffman said. “She provided adult supervision for us,” Coffman said. “She was kind and thoughtful, and very bipartisan.” She was never angry, and “that’s something we seem to have lost in politics.”

Neale was remembered by several former lawmakers, including Wilma Webb, for casting a crucial vote to approve the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Colorado, and for her deciding vote on reform of worker’s compensation. Former Mayor Webb hired Neale for Denver’s finance department and to lobby for the city and county of Denver. Neale’s job was to cover the Joint Budget Committee, a committee that she served on for several years. 

She was “loyal, brave, true, reverent, smart and fun, and she had great hair,” said Gottlieb. “You went to Betty for advice. She probably bore more burdens in this Capitol than anyone,” said Blickensderfer. “She had her thumb on the pulse of this place.”

Anderson spoke on behalf of several people, including former Senate President Tom Norton and Sen. Dave Owen, and former Reps. Jeanne Faatz and Bob Kirscht, who said when Neale was first appointed to the JBC, several caucus members shadowed her, although she wasn’t supposed to know about it. They intended to make sure she was up to speed on the JBC. She handled it with great humo, Kirscht wrote. Once, when the JBC chair was preparing to call a meeting to order, Neale asked him to wait, because “her monitors weren’t there yet.” She didn’t want them to miss anything, Kirscht wrote.

“She was one of the nicest and most efficient legislators” this body has ever had, he concluded.