This story was updated with more information and comments at 10 a.m. Thursday.

Cathy Reynolds, the first woman elected to the Denver City Council in 1975, died on Tuesday. She was 76.

She also is the longest-serving council member, 28 years and 21 days in the council’s at-large seat, until 2003. Reynolds is a former council president.

Two years ago Saturday, she lamented on Facebook about aging.

“Older life is no picnic for an old sinner like me, but it’s good,” she wrote.

Her husband, Rick, said the family will wait to schedule a fitting memorial. He said Cathy worried about people going to funerals with the possibility of catching or spreading coronavirus.

“Being good Democrats, we never want to hurt anybody,” he said of himself and his wife.

She also is survived by two sons, Robert and Matthew. 

Cathy Reynolds came west of Colorado from her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1966, when Rick got a job with Denver Public Schools.

“She loved this city,” he said. “She really fell in love with it.”

She ran twice for the state legislature, losing in a landslide in 1972 but only by a few hundred votes two years later. She realized many of her issues were focused on Denver, but once in office, she reveled and excelled in working with those who had a different point of view, her husband said.

Cathy Reynolds was appalled by what politics has become: combative over cooperative for the good of the city.

“Cathy disagreed with some people’s positions, but she never disagreed with the people,” he said, naming off staunch Republicans who were some of the Reynolds’ closest friends.

She was socially very liberal but fiscally very conservative, Rick Reynolds said. 

Cathy Reynolds led the way to the City Council becoming more involved up the hill at the state Capitol, and those relationships helped broaden her understanding of issues, as well. 

“She was a staunch Democrat, but she got along great with the cowboys from Steamboat Springs, Grand Junction and the Eastern Plains,” Rick Reynolds said. “The legislature became basically the city of Denver and the cowboys against the suburbs.”

She served for 25 years on the board of the Colorado Municipal League and was twice its president, in addition to being president of the National League of Cities in 1987.

John Bennett was the Denver City Council’s staff director from 1988 to 2005.

He recalled in the 1990s, when Reynolds led the effort to pass an assault rifle ban in Denver. Phone calls rolled into City Hall, and about 1 in 10 included a death threat aimed at Reynolds. She not only refused to be intimidated and back down, she went about her life as usual with grace and compassion toward those who disagreed.

“It inspired me the way she displayed so much courage,” Bennett said.

She was great at finding a middle ground, he said. When people would file a bill that she didn’t like, she would file a similar bill that she could live with, then work from there, rather than come out with her self-righteousness a’blazing, as is the custom today.

“She was a wonderful person,” Bennett said.

Sam Mamet, who retired as the league’s executive director last year, called Reynolds a friend and inspiration.

“She knew everybody and everybody knew her,” Mamet said Wednesday evening. “She was an amazing ambassador for Denver and she just loved being with other city leaders. She was a lot of fun, but she was focused on the issues and helping people. She was a real legend.”

Reynolds chaired the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District for more than 20 years and served on the city’s Convention Center Hotel Authority. She has also served on the city’s Citizen Oversight Board.

She appeared five times on C-SPAN, the television journal of government.

Reynolds also founded with Nieves Perez McIntire in September 1985 the Denver Women’s Commission, an organization that still promotes social, economic and political quality of life for women in Denver. She was inducted into the Denver and Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame in 2004.

“But more important are her many singular accomplishments,” Councilman Kevin Flynn said in an email. “She was a leader in the drive for the mill levy for services for people with developmental disabilities; she led the move to change exclusionary zoning that, in the 1970s, still prohibited LGBTQ couples from living together in certain neighborhoods; she endured countless death threats when she spearheaded the ban on assault weapons in 1989; and any big project from the new airport in 1989 to the convention center, Pepsi Center and others all had her leadership stamp on them.”

Flynn covered Reynolds when he was a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News from 1981 until the paper closed in 2009.

He noted, “Cathy’s best skill was counting to seven, which enabled her to pass many of her initiatives.” 

Before getting into city politics, she lost in attempts to represent House District 15 in the General Assembly.

Reynolds was lauded by some of Denver’s current top women in politics two years ago, in a Facebook post by Susan Barnes-Gelt, who served on the City Council from 1995 to 2003.

“Denver’s council had its own Nancy Pelosi,” Barnes-Gelt wrote as Pelosi was to be reinstalled as House Speaker. “Smart, principled, cagey, manipulative, effective & powerful.” 

Charlie Brown, who served on the council from 2001 to 2015, said, “Her fingerprints are all over the city.”

Current councilman Paul Kashmann responded simply, “Role. Model.”

Current councilwoman Debbie Ortega spoke of the city’s women trailblazers, led by Reynolds.

“It was such an honor to serve with strong women on the Denver City Council – Cathy Reynolds, Cathy Donohue, Ramona Martinez, Kathleen Mackenzie, to name a few…” she wrote. “Cathy thank you for 28 years of service to Denver!!

Flynn posted in the string that Reynolds was “the most consequential council member we’ve had.”

As the tributes stacked up, Reynolds responded:

“Your words make me smile. And make me proud. I do love Denver! Being compared to Speaker Pelosi is a huge complement. Thank you, Susan. I hadn’t thought of it, but now that a I have, my ego knows no bounds! I love the brick and motor projects I worked on, large and small, but my best efforts were social. For example, the dedicated tax to fund programs for the developmentally disabled, our assault weapons ordinance and the Equal Rights Ordinance, the reaction to which kicked off the infamous Colorado hate state!

“Older life is no picnic for an old sinner like me, but it’s good. I thank my wonderful colleagues elected and not, for allowing me a place at an excellent table.”

Reynolds made history as the first woman elected to council because Cathy Donohue, the second woman, had to go into a runoff a month later before winning the second seat held by a woman. The first woman to serve on the council, however, was Elisa Dasmascio-Palladino, the daughter of the architect of the Brown Palace, who was appointed to vacancy by Mayor George Begole in 1935 then chose not to run for a full term to support her replacement.

“Being the first is never easy,” said Michal Rosenoer, the executive director of Emerge Colorado, the state’s largest training organization for women hoping to run for office. “Cathy wasn’t just elected as the first woman to Denver City Council, she was elected seven times. That speaks to the immense amount of respect the voters had for her, and her election as the first paved the way for many strong women leaders to follow in her footsteps.

“Cathy had both a regional and national voice on city policy and was a leader who wouldn’t hesitate to work with people from across the political spectrum. Her passion and leadership will be missed.”