- Date Of Birth: January 20, 1933
- Date Of Death: August 7, 2021
- State: Colorado
Hilker, Richard F.
Jan. 20, 1933 – Aug. 7, 2021
Longtime Denver-area newspaperman Dick Hilker was soft-spoken, but his voice as a writer and editor — with that wry, acerbic wit — was loud.
Hilker, of Arvada, who spent more than 40 years in the newspaper business, died Aug. 7. He was 88.
Richard Fredrick Hilker was born Jan. 20, 1933, in San Pedro, Calif., the only child of F.C. (Bud) and Arlene Hilker. The family moved to Denver in 1945.
When he was a student at Byers Junior High (now Byers Middle) School in Denver, Hilker decided he wanted to be a journalist because it would be an interesting career. After all, “news” means something “new” every day, he reasoned.
There may also have been a subliminal connection, because the school was named after William N. Byers, the founder of Denver’s first newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News.
At Denver’s South High School, nationally recognized creative writing teacher Harold Keables influenced Hilker further. Tough and demanding, Keables taught his students to “keep it clear and simple,” Hilker said.
Hilker worked part-time as a copy boy at The Denver Post while attending high school and worked at The Post full-time in the summers and on weekends during the school year. He graduated from South High in 1951 and enrolled at the University of Denver, majoring in journalism. He was on the staff of the DU newspaper, the Clarion, and in the summers interned with weekly newspapers in Jefferson County.
At DU, he roomed with the Clarion’s editor, Joe Singleton, a seasoned newspaperman who had gone back to school after serving in the Marine Corps. He favored a writing style of terse sentences. Tight writing – plus delivering a punchline with precise timing — would become Hilker’s hallmark.
While Hilker attended DU between 1951 and 1954, he never earned a degree. His last year there, he was managing editor of the Clarion. “I think I made the honor roll – at the Stadium Inn,” he quipped, referring to the popular campus watering hole.
Why didn’t he finish? College degrees weren’t as important as they are today, he said. He had gotten married in December 1953 and had a wife to support. Plus, he knew what he wanted to do. And he had learned from good people.
After leaving DU, Hilker worked a year at the weekly Jefferson Sentinel newspaper in Lakewood, an independent, respected – and sometimes feared – government watchdog. He said that he and another cohort basically took Sentinel owner Ed Moder’s notes from meetings and other events, ghostwriting them into stories. And they were good at what they did. “Ed Moder couldn’t write a lick, but he was a hell of a reporter,” Hilker said.
He then joined the Denver Post sports department on a full-time basis in 1955, while still working one day a week at the Sentinel. Among the memorable events he covered for The Post were the 1959 World Figure Skating Championships at the old Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs and the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, Calif.
Hilker also was the beat writer for two national championship DU hockey teams and covered the 1959 dramatic 4-4 game between DU and the heavily favored Soviet Union national team, still considered among Colorado’s greatest sports events.
After Moder died unexpectedly in 1960, Hilker moved permanently to suburban newspapers as editor and general manager of the Jefferson Sentinel. He also worked weekends at The Post. “I always had two jobs – to support four kids and my wife,” he said.
He became a part-owner of the Sentinel in 1966 when Moder’s widow decided to sell. Later, the Sentinel was one of 13 Denver-area newspapers that Hilker and his partners sold to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1971. Hilker stayed for 20 years with its local subsidiary, Community Publications Co., in a number of executive roles, but also kept his talented hand in writing as weekly op-ed columnist for the chain.
Hilker retired in 1991 when the individual papers were sold and moved to Arizona, where he enjoyed going to Major League Baseball spring-training games. He and his wife lived for 14 years in Fountain Hills, Ariz., before returning to Colorado and settling in Loveland and then Arvada.
He wrote an op-ed column regularly for nearly 10 years for The Denver Post, until 2017.
The self-effacing Hilker wrote with clever cynicism and humor – and, always, in terse sentences. His writing knack was recognized when he was named Colorado Journalist of the Year in 1971 by the Society of Professional Journalists. He also twice won national first-place awards from Suburban Newspapers of America for general interest columns.
Hilker was on the board of directors of the Colorado Press Association and was on the board and served as president of the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He also was on the Citizens Advisory Board of Red Rocks Community College; a board member and president of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce; a board member of the Jefferson County Mental Health Center; and president of the Jefferson County Unit of the American Cancer Society.
Hilker was married 66 years to Marianne White Hilker, who died in July 2020. He is survived by a daughter, Richianne Sullivan of Arvada, and sons Randall and Ross of Surprise, Ariz., and Rick of Lexington, Ky. There also are six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren surviving.
