On May 24, the Roaring Fork Valley and Aspen Journalism lost one of our most devoted and invincible citizens: Tim McFlynn. Tim was a lawyer by training, but a cowboy at heart. Take a Stanford-educated cowboy who loved people, the wilds, crazy adventures, and seemingly impossible ideas and you have a picture of the man.
When Tim found a civic cause that he believed in, he would pursue it relentlessly with his considerable intelligence and infinite energy. Not for a few months or years, but for decades.
To list the many causes he led, championed, and invented would take a small book, so I’ll stick to just a few of the ones that stand out in my mind. Apart from his large thriving family, I consider the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails program to be his biggest legacy. He co-founded the program, built a strategy and a cohort to get it funded, and then stuck with it for decades to see it become hundreds of miles of trails and bike paths, tens of thousands of acres of open space, and intact wildlife habitat that all of us enjoy.
The Nordic skier crossing the Owl Creek Trail or the mountain biker riding the Crown has likely never heard of Tim, but the privilege of enjoying those spaces is a direct result of him sitting in a room some 30 years ago with a small group of skeptical people and convincing them it was a good idea. That plus hundreds of meetings to make it happen and get it funded and refunded.
Tim was a founding board member of Aspen Journalism when the organization launched in 2011 and its success is largely due to his same dog-with-a-bone ferocity. He brain-stormed with our founder Brent Gardner-Smith at the beginning, helped get early funding, recruited board members, and then went to nearly every board meeting with ideas and steadfast encouragement to the day he died.
Tim also helped The Wilderness Workshop evolve from a small organization to the powerhouse it is today. He served as board president there, brought in some of its most prominent board members, and loved the many get-togethers of the Workshop over the years.
The list goes on almost endlessly: public access to Hunter Creek, The Third Street Center in Carbondale, The Manaus Foundation, Public Counsel of the Rockies, Western Resource Advocates — he played a strong hand in each of these.
He had a personality trait that served him well through all his achievements: he loved conversations, he loved people, and dare I say this, he loved meetings. I suspect he went to more meetings than any person on the planet. As someone who kind of drags his feet to meetings, I am still hoping to inherit this trait.
Beyond his public life, Tim was a mentor to many of us and took a genuine interest in our life’s journey. As a lawyer and eventually a professional mediator he helped dozens of us negotiate unpleasant and sticky situations, be they legal or personal. I called him my consigliere for his uncanny ability to size up the politics and personalities of every conflict and every project.
He and his wife, Donna, lived the advice of the late Edward Abbey who wrote, “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.” Through their long marriage, they explored the West on dozens of rafting trips, hikes and road trips. But I’m afraid Tim did not abide by Abbey’s other advice to be “a part-time crusader and a half-hearted fanatic.” There was nothing part-time or half-hearted about him. He was full-time and all heart.
We are grateful for his long dedication to the life and health of this valley. We are in his debt for all he did for Aspen Journalism. Our hearts go out to Donna and his family and we will deeply miss him.
