Richard Edward Young, a retired rear admiral, attorney and towering figure in Colorado’s civic landscape for more than six decades, died Jan. 7. He was 94.

A lifelong advocate for civil rights, fair housing, veterans and his neighborhood, Young was a decorated officer in the Naval Reserves and held prominent leadership roles across the decades, from founding and later chairing the Park Hill Action Committee and Metro Denver Fair Housing Center to chairing the Denver Democratic Party during a pivotal period in the 1970s and serving as president and CEO of the United Veterans Coalition of Colorado in his later years.

Young died of natural causes in his family’s Park Hill home, surrounded by family, including his wife of more than 70 years, Lorie, just weeks after the couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on Dec. 25, 2025.

“My mom wouldn’t leave his side,” Young’s daughter Nan told Colorado Politics. “What a caring man he was, what a great father, and he had just an incredible sense of humor. He did so many little things for people that had nothing to do with politics and all of that.”

Colorado’s two sitting U.S. senators, who were both neighbors of the Young family at different times, described Young as a tireless fighter for justice and the epitome of a public servant.

Young was born on November 30, 1931, in Shenandoah, Iowa, to Jessie (Susanka) and Floyd Young. His childhood traced a midcentury American arc, with family moves from Iowa to Philadelphia, then Lincoln, Nebraska, before settling in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. As a teenager, Young spent summers building cabins in the mountain community, several of which still stand, according to a remembrance provided by his family.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1953, Young entered the U.S. Navy’s Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, finishing ninth in a class of 911. It was during a brief return to Ann Arbor that he met Loraine Joyce Moote, an undergraduate. Their courtship unfolded largely at a distance as she completing her studies and worked as a research assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles while he served aboard the destroyer USS Maddox in the Western Pacific. They married on 1955 in Cadillac, Michigan.

Young left active duty in 1956 and returned to the University of Michigan Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1960 and served as an editor of the Michigan Law Review. That same year, he and Lorie moved to Denver, where he joined the law firm Holme, Roberts & Owen and they bought what would become their family’s longtime home in the Park Hill neighborhood.

Almost immediately, Young immersed himself in local activism, becoming a founding member — and later chair — of the Park Hill Action Committee, which became a leading force against redlining and blockbusting while working to ensure the peaceful integration of one of Denver’s most diverse neighborhoods. In January 1964, he helped bring Martin Luther King Jr. to Denver and hosted a reception for the civil rights leader at his Park Hill home, an event neighbors would recall for decades.

Throughout the 1960s, Young emerged as one of the city’s most visible and effective advocates for fair housing and equal opportunity. Mayor Tom Currigan appointed him to chair the Denver Commission on Human Relations in 1962, and he later served as vice president of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. In 1966, he founded and chaired the Metro Denver Fair Housing Center, which quickly gained national attention and secured a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. His work earned him the Human Relations Award from Beth Joseph Synagogue’s Men’s Club in 1968.

In 1970, Young testified before the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Equality of Educational Opportunity, delivering what The Denver Post editorial board later called “the best brief job we’ve ever seen at exposing the anatomy of housing segregation.”

Closer to home, representing the Park Hill Action Committee, Young negotiated in 1967 with Conoco to prevent the development of a small parcel of land in the heart of the community. He eventually persuaded the oil company to donate the property to create what is now Turtle Park at East 23rd Avenue and Dexter Street. Drawing on the building skills he’d honed as a teenager, Young helped construct the park’s first gazebo.

Young won the election as chair of the Denver Democratic Party in 1971. Over the next 18 months, Democrats captured a U.S. Senate seat, the city’s congressional seat, the district attorney’s office, and 13 of 19 contested state legislative seats, along with attaining the highest Democratic voter registration in the city’s history. During the same period, Lorie Young was president of the League of Women Voters of Denver and, later, the League of Women Voters of Colorado.

Though he stepped down from the county party chairmanship in 1976, Dick Young continued to direct voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts at the state level and chaired numerous commissions at the request of Gov. Richard Lamm.

Parallel to his civilian career, Young never left the Navy and remained active in the Naval Reserve, where he rose through the ranks to rear admiral in 1982. He later served with the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and was selected to chair the nation’s Fifth International Naval Review in New York Harbor during the Fourth of July weekend in 1986, marking the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. Over his career, he received three Legion of Merit awards and the Navy League’s Meritorious Citation — the first time it was awarded to a reserve officer.

In later years, Young continued to serve veterans and military families. Appointed in 2009 by Gov. Bill Ritter to chair Colorado’s Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, he helped build it into the most productive ESGR program in the nation. He later served on the Commission on Veterans Community Living Centers under Gov. John Hickenlooper and as legislative chair of the United Veterans Coalition of Colorado. His honors included the Governor’s Military Community Service Award and the national Lincoln Standard Bearers Award, presented in 2015 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Hickenlooper, who is serving his first term in the U.S. Senate, recalled in a statement to Colorado Politics that Dick and Lorie Young were among the first people he met when his family moved to Park Hill in 2005. The former governor added that the third floor of the Young’s home featured the “greatest collection of Colorado political memorabilia that I’ve ever seen, even to this day!”

“Denver lost a true fighter for justice and a devoted public servant. Richard was a giant in Colorado politics. He took on racial segregation in Park Hill in the 1960s and championed Denver’s civil rights movement,” Hickenlooper said. “As governor, we had the chance to work together to help veterans get the care they deserve. Denver would not be the city, nor Colorado the state, that they are today without Richard’s towering legacy.”

Hickenlooper’s Democratic colleague, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, said in a statement that he and his wife, Susan, had “the honor of living directly across the street” from the Youngs when they lived in Park Hill.

“Dick was a great neighbor, and an even greater Coloradan,” Bennet said. “He fought tirelessly for the rights of every Coloradan. He was a crusader for fair housing, and hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. at his home in 1964. His unwavering advocacy for veterans set a national standard for how states must support those who risked their lives for our country. Susan and I spent countless hours with our three daughters at Turtle Park, thanks to Dick’s advocacy for Park Hill. His work changed Colorado for the better, and I’m grateful to have known and learned from him. Lorie and the Young family are in our thoughts.”

Young’s daughter Nan said with a laugh that her father’s activism — and sense of humor — endured in recent years, including efforts to save the Park Hill Golf Course from development. When she picked him up after a stint waving a sign on a busy thoroughfare in the neighborhood, she recalled, “He said he’d counted 64 thumbs-up for it, but said, ‘Of course, I’m half blind, so they could have been giving me the finger.'”

“He had a really incredible life,” she said. “You couldn’t ask for a better life than he had. You can’t ask for more than that.”

Young is survived by his wife, his daughter and son-in-law, Diane Young and Jerry De La Cruz; his daughter Patti Janicki; his daughter and son-in-law, Nan Young and Brian Kelly; and his daughter Karen Young; as well as his six grandchildren, Samuel, Benjamin, Joshua, Lorraine, Vanessa and Kai.

A memorial service is planned at 2 p.m. February. 27 at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia St., in Denver. Burial will be at a later date at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver. Memorial donations on Young’s behalf may be made to the ACLU of Colorado; the Rocky Mountain Navy at American League Post 1, Denver; and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.