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Warren J. Conner

Birth	:	1920 Pitkin County, Colorado, USA
Death	:	2001 Aspen, Pitkin County, Colorado, USA
Burial	:	Red Butte Cemetery, Aspen, Pitkin County, USA
Coordinate	:	39.2016983, -106.8347015
Description	:	WARREN J. CONNER ASPEN - The house stands in quiet defiance, at the center of a stereotype. A miner's lamp hangs from the front porch, near a brass plate etched with the same name that has hung there since they started delivering the mail. The name was here when the house was used as a miner's cottage; the family name was here even before then. The home's fraying white wood is covered in places with painted tin, patched like an old pair of jeans. Less than a block away, doors beckon to Christian Dior and Gucci... Read More	WARREN J. CONNER ASPEN - The house stands in quiet defiance, at the center of a stereotype. A miner's lamp hangs from the front porch, near a brass plate etched with the same name that has hung there since they started delivering the mail. The name was here when the house was used as a miner's cottage; the family name was here even before then. The home's fraying white wood is covered in places with painted tin, patched like an old pair of jeans. Less than a block away, doors beckon to Christian Dior and Gucci and The Gap, where a spandex-clad woman walks inside leading a giant poodle. The dog wears a faux-leopard skin collar. Across the street from the little white house, there's an upscale restaurant; on another side there is a bank and condominiums. SUVs whiz past the old carport that barely protects a rusty orange 1972 VW Beetle. When Warren Conner was born, the whole block was made up of the little homes now officially described as "representative of a typical Aspen Victorian miner's cottage." These days, the little white home is one of the last ones standing - a gingerbread house long since gone stale. "He lived the first three years of his life around the corner," says Claude Conner, as he stands in front of his brother Warren's little house on the corner of Hopkins Avenue and Hunter Street. "He lived the last 77 right here." In a town where everybody's business can mean big business, Warren Conner knew everybody's business and filed it away. After more than 50 years in public service, after living nearly every hour of his life on the same square block, he knew all about appreciating values. "Right here, right in Aspen, right on this corner. That's where he was happiest. He had many opportunities to sell it and go into a condominium," his brother says. "He always said, "No, I want to stay right here in this little house.'" Warren Conner died Easter Sunday in Aspen. He was 80. Living spirit of "ghost town" They used to say that Aspen was a ghost town after the silver bust in the late 1800s. Margaret Conner always had something to say about that. "If it was a ghost town," Warren's mother once told a reporter, "I was one of the ghosts." Warren's grandparents - the Conners and Harringtons - emigrated from Ireland in the mid-1800s. After mining for decades, his grandfather served as the undersheriff of Aspen, beginning more than a century of public service tied to the family. Warren was born in 1920, in a home near the county courthouse. Three years later the family moved around the corner to the house where Warren would spend the rest of his life. The house at 534 Hopkins was moved from its original spot near Aspen Mountain in 1908 and placed downtown near other similar cottages. These days, some people look down their noses at the dilapidated buildings and call them "miner's shacks," but the people who call them that never lived in one. Warren spent much of his childhood playing in the places he would later work. He often visited his grandfather at the courthouse, where the Conner kids would play cops and robbers using the real jail. He also helped out at the neighboring Armory building, where he shoveled coal into the furnace alongside his father (the building now holds city offices.) Warren graduated from Aspen High in 1938 and enlisted in the Navy, but the military rejected him because of a heart problem. Warren soon took a job at the courthouse where he already knew every hallway blindfolded. In 1947 he was named deputy county treasurer and in 1949 he became deputy county assessor. He walked one block to work at the courthouse each day until his retirement in 1991. "He was very good with detail. He knew every piece of property in the county," says his brother, who remembers many trips with Warren into the mountains, where his brother could recite property histories from the days they were mining claims up to their days as ground for modern-day, million-dollar movie star homes. From the condos sprouting across from his porch and the escalating figures in his tax assessment books, Conner watched Aspen transform. "As far as Aspen today, one of my heartfelt wishes would be for people who live and work here be able to afford to live here, and not go banging down the highway to go home," he told the Aspen Times in 1997. "Another wish would be for people to slow down for others in the crosswalks. People are always in such a hurry nowadays." Keeping ahold of history In Conner Memorial Park near the old white house, a towering spruce tree shades the picnic benches. Warren planted that tree 60 years ago, after finding the sapling up near Conundrum Creek. He spent plenty of time hiking the trails and creeks for the rest of his life, bird watching with friends or angling in places where the fish seemed to know he was coming and didn't seem to mind. In his spare time, Conner would often head up to old mining claims, collecting the rocks he eventually parlayed into a collection that spanned the history of the area and its mines. The rocks were displayed for years in a local museum. Now they hide in boxes in Warren Conner's garage. "He went out to the museum one day and they had his rock collection pushed out of the spot where it used to be and put back into a back room," Claude Conner says. "Warren said, "Why is this?' And they told him mining's not important to the town anymore, it's all skiing. "That's too bad, but that's what happens," Claude says. "Sometimes people just don't know." The Conner family eventually bought two houses next to the old white one; the patch where they used to garden is now Conner Memorial Park. The homes have since been declared historic landmarks. Warren never married and lived with his parents in the white house, caring for them until his father died 18 years ago and his mother died in September 2000. That's about the same time Warren's health began to fail. As long as he was physically able, Conner attended daily Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church. The house where he was born stood across from the church's front door; the house he lived the last 77 years looked at the church's back door. When new priests would come to head the church, they would often come to get the key from Warren. Six priests oversaw Warren Conner's funeral service, some of them from St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, where Warren had helped the monks acquire their property. He was buried in Red Butte cemetery - a place where he sometimes walked among the headstones, reciting the histories of the names on the rocks, and conjuring images of the places they lived. As Conner's funeral service ended - just as friends and family finished the last hymn - a siren rang through the town and into the cemetery, as it does every day at noon. "Someone said, "How traditional. Right at the end of the service, the siren went off,'" Claude Conner says. "They used to blow the siren for the miners, at the end of each shift. They blew the siren when the shift was over." Denver Post Transcribed by Carol Moore Aspen, Colorado ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

frequently asked questions (FAQ):

Where is Warren J. Conner's memorial?
Warren J. Conner's memorial is located at: Red Butte Cemetery, Aspen, Pitkin County, USA.
When did Warren J. Conner death?
Warren J. Conner death on 2001 in Aspen, Pitkin County, Colorado, USA
Where are the coordinates of the Warren J. Conner's memorial?
Latitude: 39.2016983
Longitude: -106.8347015

Family Members:

Parent

Milton George Conner

(1898 - 1983)

Margaret A. Harrington Conner

(1900 - 2000)

Flowers:

Nearby Cemetories:

1. Red Butte Cemetery
Aspen, Pitkin County, USA
Coordinate: 39.2016983, -106.8347015

2. Ute Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.1828003, -106.8118973

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6. Hidden Valley Cemetery
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7. Ashcroft Cemetery #2
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Coordinate: 39.0720880, -106.8024170

8. Saint Benedicts Monastery Cemetery
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12. Marble Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.0797005, -107.2277985

13. Prospect Mountain Ranch Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.0927230, -107.2395980

14. Hillcrest Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.3922005, -107.1936035

15. Crested Butte Cemetery
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Coordinate: 38.8781000, -106.9755000

16. Evergreen Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.4077988, -107.2155991

17. Gold Park Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.4063988, -106.4338989

18. Winfield Cemetery
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Coordinate: 38.9847641, -106.4406967

19. Fisher Cemetery
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20. Marion Cemetery
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21. Mount Holy Cross Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.2460000, -106.3135000

22. Irwin Cemetery
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Coordinate: 38.8507996, -107.0997009

23. Saint Joseph Cemetery
Leadville, Lake County, USA
Coordinate: 39.2468987, -106.3114014

24. Hebrew Cemetery
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Coordinate: 39.2490000, -106.3079000