Barbara Finn

Barbara Finn, the co-founder of the Gold Hill Inn, mid-wife to a host of worthy causes, and a great good heart, died Saturday after being stricken at her home in Longmont. She was 77. Barbara leaves behind her husband Frank, two sisters, Mary Jean McMorran of Boulder and Anne McCracken of Anacortes, Washington, four children, Deborah Millennor of Broomfield, Christopher, Matthew, and Brian Finn of Gold Hill, and four grandchildren, Shivaun C. Finn, Luke Casey Finn, Katie Marie Finn, and Amy Kay Millennor ? and thousands of friends. Barbara MacFetridge Finn was born May 29, 1929, in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Clyde and Olive MacFetridge. She attended Elmira College, graduating in 1950 with a degree in Chemistry. She went to work for American Cyanamid in Stanford, Connecticut. At a company Christmas party in 1950, held at the Greenwich, Connecticut YMCA, she met her future husband. He was the lifeguard. The couple was married on January 26, 1952 in Syracuse. The Finns moved to Boulder in 1955, where Frank worked for the YMCA for two years before taking a job in Salina, Kansas, in 1957. They returned to Boulder County permanently in 1959. Frank worked for the Post Office and as caretaker for the Trojan Ranch west of Gold Hill. In 1962, Barbara and Frank purchased the old Bluebird Lodge in Gold Hill, ten miles west of Boulder, and opened the Gold Hill Inn in the lodge?s former dining hall, a unique restaurant that has become a Boulder County institution and achieved international fame. The restaurant opened on June 15, 1962, but not before its opening had been twice delayed by spring storms. Barbara was responsible for the Inn?s menu, personally creating some of its more memorable dishes, including Lamb Venison, a lamb roast marinated in buttermilk, and Glasgow Roast Beef, a sirloin tip stuffed with liver pate. Special offerings included roast suckling pig and clam bakes. The Inn also featured unique entertainment, like a volunteer jug band made up largely of CU and National Bureau of Standards physicists. Barbara took great pride in the fact that the kitchen kept waste to a minimum. And she was particularly insistent on putting fresh-cut mountain wildflowers on the tables. The Inn broke all the rules of business ? except the ones that mattered: those concerning customer service and product integrity. At first the Finns attempted to keep the Inn open year round, although the drafty building was at the time heated only by fireplaces and pot-belly stoves and the guests who braved the ten-mile drive over unpaved roads in the winter often had to keep their gloves on while they ate. Eventually Barbara and Frank settled on the May-October schedule. In the most recent edition of the Inn?s cookbook, Barbara recalled on particularly memorable evening when a busload of scientists attending an international conference in Boulder was stranded in a storm on the way to the Inn and they had to hike up Lick Skillet Road in a blizzard to get there. The staff plied the guests with brandy and massaged their feet in front to the fireplaces. The featured speaker that evening was then-Gov. John Love ? who had arrived by a different road ? and the moment he began to talk the power failed. The guests found the banquet so memorable that they returned the following year. Word slowly spread about the unique restaurant ten miles west of Boulder, accessible only by a harrowing drive over unpaved roads, and after several years it turned into a success and eventually an institution. Barbara and Frank drew inspiration from the poet Eugene Field, who had visited Gold Hill while working as a Denver newspaper man and who wrote five poems about the camp and the lodge, including one called Casey?s Table d?Hote. ?We loved the poem. It?s a bit long winded, but amazingly prophetic for us,? she later wrote. ?We didn?t design the Inn after the poem, but the similarities are pretty stunning.? ?Every time I enter the Inn, I feel the same affection for the golden tones of the old log and helter-skelter struts of the roof,? she said. ?It is a feeling of belonging. I?m always thankful that I have been allowed to be the caretaker of this place for a period in its life.? ?The Inn was Barbara?s baby, it was really her fifth child,? said Deborah. It was not, however, her only interest. She never lost interest in the social work that had originally brought her and Frank to Boulder County. For many years they took in troubled teens and foster children, leasing the Broken Arrow Ranch for a year in the 1970s as a summer camp for them. In some respects Barbara considered the restaurant as the means of allowing her to pursue her work with them. A number went on to distinguished careers, including one who became a neurosurgeon. The Finns also hosted dozens of benefits for political candidates, mostly Democrats, and worthy causes, including the victims of the Black Tiger Fire, a benefit that Barbara organized in five days and which raised $11, 000. In later years, Barbara helped organize the drive to turn an abandoned Catholic church in Gold Hill into the town museum. She spearheaded the fund-raising to buy the building and the campaign to acquire artifacts. Barbara and Frank gave their four children an upbringing as unique as their restaurant. One reason they chose to live in Gold Hill was the town?s one-room school house, the oldest continually operating school in Colorado, which all four Finn children attended. The kids had a burro, named Twinkles, who for years wondered the streets of Gold Hill charming guests at the Inn, including the late Senator William Fulbright. All four Finn children worked in the Inn, which today is run as a family owned and operated business. Barbara was always attracted by two things. One was water. She loved to take her repose by it, whether it was an ocean, a lake, or a pond. The other was new things and ideas. At Barbara?s insistence, the Finns regularly vacationed in Mexico, driving south in an old school bus and camping on the beach, years before Mexico became a popular destination. At the time of the first energy crisis in 1973, they built a large solar-heated greenhouse onto their home. When Toyota brought out the hybrid-electric Prius, Barbara became an early adopter. She never stopped thinking and learning. She was always on the cutting edge. Janos Wilder, a cook at the Gold Hill Inn who went on to open a restaurant in Tucson and win a James Beard award, dedicated his book to Barbara. The dedication read ?At the Gold Hill Inn Barbara Finn taught me that anything was possible.? A memorial service and Feast of Barbara will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday June 25 at the Gold Hill Inn to celebrate Barbara?s life. The family requests that in lieu of flowers contributions be made to Historic Gold Hill Inc., c/o Howe Mortuary, 439 Coffman St., Longmont, CO 80501.