Denver couple wills $3 million to Rocky Mountain National Park fund

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 28, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated July 28, 2008 at 12:23 a.m.

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Photo by Special To The Rocky

Edith and John London loved hiking and taking photos in the Rocky Mountains.

A Denver couple has left a record donation of $3 million to the nonprofit organization that supports Rocky Mountain National Park.

But before Edith London bequeathed the money in her will, she and her late husband, John, also left behind a story of two remarkable lives, Rocky Mountain Nature Association Executive Director Curt Buchholtz said Sunday.

Buchholtz, who went through the childless couple's papers while settling their estate, said he discovered an amazing love story.

In the letters the couple wrote to each other, she was his "aristocrat" and he was her "commoner."

Both fled the Nazis during World War II. He was Jewish, lost his entire family during the war and fled from Kassel, Germany, to Haifa in what later became Israel.

She was born in Vienna to a Jewish mother, who committed suicide when Edith was 7.

After Nazi authorities spent a year investigating her heritage, they ordered Edith to work in a factory, a job that wrecked her health, Buchholtz said.

Edith met her future husband in Switzerland while she was in a hospital and he was studying to become an automobile engineer.

They fell in love, married and moved to America in 1951, eventually settling in southwest Denver.

Along the way, Buchholtz said the couple made two big decisions.

They would never return to Europe because of their harrowing experience during the war.

And they would never bring children into a world that had been so cruel.

John London became an engineer for General Motors. Edith London worked as an accountant for sugar beet companies.

In their spare time, they loved to hike and photograph the Rocky Mountains, which reminded them of the time they shared in the Alps.

Buchholtz first met Edith London about six years ago, when she stopped by the association to donate her husband's photography equipment following his death in October 2001 at age 85.

She died in April 2007 at the age of 89, naming the association as the primary beneficiary of her will.

Most of the donation will go toward the association's Next Generation Endowment Fund for education programs.The Londons' gift puts the association within $6 million of reaching its multiyear goal of a $10 million endowment.

• July 28, 2008

  10:32 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SL10 writes:

  Cool. *thumps up*

• July 28, 2008

  3:19 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Scott writes:

  Outstanding! People like the London's should win PowerBall :-)

  Scott

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