Phil Yarter: A Life Well-Lived
Celebration of Life Planned For Aug. 23
By Jennifer Jones
Longtime Park Hill resident Phil Yarter was born in San Francisco on April 26, 1929. Some of his favorite childhood memories there included watching the Bay Bridge being built from the playground of his elementary school. During the Great Depression, he remembered selling flowers and apples to help his family make ends meet.
Eventually, they moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Phil worked at the family’s Trail Restaurant and attended Cheyenne High. He became a Cowboy at the University of Wyoming, and later attended DeVry and Denver University.
In 1955, while both were living in the Chicago area, Phil met Barbara Halladay, also from Cheyenne. The two were married in 1957 and eventually moved to Littleton, where Phil worked as an engineer with Martin Marietta. There, they began their family.
By the summer of 1967 Phil and Barbara Yarter were expecting baby number four and looking for a home to accommodate their growing family. They attended a party thrown by friends, Richard and Pat Agnew, who lived in Park Hill. A few weeks later, Phil and Barbara moved into a home that was for sale just across the street. The home was a perfect fit – and they’d already become fast friends with most of the neighbors at the party.
The couple’s daughters found lots of friends in a neighborhood full of children – 52 in just the one block!
Phil, an electronics engineer, had left Martin Marietta a few years earlier and opened his own business, Yarter Tek. He invented, designed and manufactured many products such as a beet thinner used in farming, early arcade style video games, a control box for musical/dancing fountains and the dental plating system used to make dental crowns. He enjoyed a flexible schedule that allowed him to volunteer and participate at many of the activities at Park Hill Elementary and East High. He held office for many years in the PTA at each of those schools.
Phil was politically active. He enjoyed the notoriety of being one of Park Hill’s only Republicans. For more than 40 years he was an election judge and had such great fun doing it. Jokingly, he would ask the people in line if they wanted to use his cheat sheets to vote since his sheet was already checked.
In 1968 Phil, along with a team of neighbors, construct the first gazebo in Ferguson (Turtle) Park.
With four young costumed trick-or-treaters in the house, Halloween became one of Phil’s favorite nights. As his children showed up with their bags for treats, Phil arrived behind them with a joke, brief conversation with neighbors and a coffee cup for adult beverages.
In the fall of 1983, the Yarters broke ground on a pool that would become hallowed ground for neighborhood Fourth of July swimmers and partygoers. In the summer of 1984, they invited a few neighbors to celebrate the holiday.
By 1986, and for 25 years to follow, that group easily numbered more than 100. Every year, Barbara would prepare a yellow handwritten, stick-figured drawing invitation. Then, Phil would walk the neighborhood to deliver at the homes of friends to remind them of the Yarter’s Annual Pool Party. A wry verbal reminder always came with the invitation: “suits optional.”
Phil loved seeing and entertaining old and new friends, and the Fourth of July quickly replaced Halloween as his favorite holiday.
In 2008 the first Park Hill neighborhood bike parade began, its success spurred the larger event, which became official in 2010.
This year, on his favorite holiday, Phil passed away peacefully. His wife Barbara preceded him in death in 2010. Left to cherish his memory are his daughters Jennifer Jones (Bruce), Carole Yarter-Starkman, Amy McConville (Mike) and Nanci Yarter (Sal); sister, Susan Edwards, grandchildren, Ebony Nunn, Qiesha Lewis (LeVantz), Napoya Jones, DeRon Jones, Madolyn Jones Street (Ralph and baby Olivia), Christopher Macklin, Nicole Starkman, Phil Jones; and a host of nieces and nephews.
An open house-style celebration of Phil Yarter’s life will be at the Cherry Tomato Restaurant at 23rd and Dahlia on Sunday afternoon, August 23 from 1-4 p.m. In lieu of cards or flowers, the family respectfully requests a written memory or story be shared at PhilYarterStories@gmail.com.
Fireworks for Phil
By Justin Bresler
4th of July Parade Founder and Organizer
The official 4th of July Park Hill Parade started in 2010, but it was in 2008 that we had our first neighborhood bike parade. The success of that spurred us to create the much larger event of today.
Phil Yarter was an inspiration to us, proving for years that Park Hill loves to come out and celebrate the 4th – and that it’s a day on which we can celebrate Park Hill’s decades-long tradition of diversity and inclusion.
In 2008, Phil was one of the first people who got behind the idea of the bike parade. He shoved everyone out of the pool area to come watch from the front lawn. It provided the 10 kids in that first parade some well-deserved encouragement.