In Memoriam: Larry Ambrose, A Tribute
By Phil Goodstein
For the GPHN
![](https://greaterparkhill.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Larry-Ambrose1-150x300.jpg)
Park Hill and lovers of the city’s parks lost a good friend on Jan. 28, Larry Ambrose.
A native of Pueblo, where he graduated from Central High School, Ambrose had an amazing reach and helped shape the destiny of Denver, his adopted city. He was a polymath, excelling in many different fields. A hypnotizing storyteller, he is the man as responsible as anybody for the survival of the Golda Meir House. He oversaw its move to the Auraria campus in 1988 when he was the head of a newly-created Auraria Foundation.
Over the years, Ambrose was heavily involved in entertainment. Settling in Denver in the 1970s, he ran a booking and talent agency. At one time, he was the co-owner of a bar/nightclub in Lakewood. His family once sponsored the Ambrose Jellymakers, an Amateur Athletic Union basketball team.
Always proud of his hometown, in the early 21st century Ambrose was the manager of the Pueblo Convention Center. He was a close partner of his wife of 48 years, Jane Parker-Ambrose, in her amazing kite business. Included was helping promote her international One Sky One World Kite Fly for Peace festival that she once held on lands that had been part of Stapleton Airport.
Ambrose was also most active in Denver city politics. Twice an unsuccessful candidate for city council, in 2015 many voters disgruntled with the Michael Hancock administration rallied around Ambrose. He received two percent of the vote as an undeclared write-in candidate for mayor. In part they did so because they knew him as a champion of parks.
As much as anything, Ambrose was very much a neighborhood activist. Along the way, he helped to shape the coalition of the city’s neighborhood groups, Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation, of which he served as president. As the head of the INC’s parks committee, he was a fierce fighter for the improvement, enhancement, and expansion of the city’s park system.
Always ready with a story, Ambrose created a marvelous portrait of the world around him. Not afraid to take on city hall, he endlessly had a vision of improvement and uplift for everybody. This particularly came out in his last job, as executive director of the Southwest Improvement Council in southwest Denver.
Ambrose, 76, died of cancer, and services were at Fairmount Cemetery on Feb. 2. Besides Jane, he is survived by numerous cousins. Most of all, he is remembered by the many people he met, educated, entertained, and assisted.