Papers of Hamlet J. "Chips" Barry, III

Chips Barry served as the manager of Denver Water for nearly twenty years. He brought a career as a natural resources attorney and administrator to the position, as well as his outgoing nature and jovial good humor.

Hamlet Joseph Barry, III, was born in Oceanside, California, in 1944. He earned his lifelong nickname by being "two chips" off the old block. His parents, Denver natives, brought the family back to Denver when Barry was two. He earned a B.A. in American studies from Yale University in 1966 and a J.D. from Columbia University in 1969. Shortly after graduation, Barry headed for a year in Alaska as a VISTA volunteer and field attorney for the Alaska Legal Services Corporation.

After just over a year back in Denver clerking for Judge Robert McWilliams of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Barry departed again, this time for the Marshall Islands. He spent most of 1972 through 1974 as the directing attorney for the local office of the Micronesian Legal Services Corporation. There, he worked on numerous civil cases and assisted people of the Bikini and Enewetak atolls displaced by atomic and hydrogen bomb testing since the 1940s.

After Barry returned to Denver, he spent a year working for the Western Governors' Regional Energy Policy Office before becoming a self-employed consultant from 1976 to 1978. This consulting work focused on contracts for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR), primarily on matters of water, reclamation, and energy. As a consultant, he began work on the Colorado Water Policy Study, which resulted in a four-volume report that examined various consequences of alternatives for water distribution and use in the state.

Barry finished this work as a DNR employee in mid-1978. He then served as the director of the Mined Land Reclamation Division until 1980, when he was appointed deputy director and then acting executive director in 1983 for seven months, resuming the position of deputy until 1985. He left public service to be an associate with the Denver law firm Calkins, Kramer, Grimshaw and Harring. In December 1987, Governor Roy Romer appointed Barry executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, where he served until 1990.

Barry began work as the manager of Denver Water, the largest water utility between Chicago and California, in January 1991, just months after the agency's proposal for Two Forks Dam was unexpectedly vetoed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Barry was tasked with finding new ways to provide a secure water supply for over one million people in the Denver metropolitan area. Recurring drought added to this challenge but also helped make people aware of water issues and thus spur unprecedented conservation.

Barry enjoyed tennis, squash, golfing, and skiing, though poking fun at himself and joking with others may have been his favorite pastimes. While returning from a 2001 ski trip, a car accident on an icy mountain road left Barry blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and unable to move half his face. While these injuries and some bone fractures slowed him down for a few months, they also gave him a new outlook on life, and something new to joke about.

Throughout his career, Barry actively served on several energy-, law-, and water-related boards and committees. An able and entertaining speaker, he also frequently spoke at conferences -- and portrayed Theodore Roosevelt on occasion. He received several awards, including the 1993 Thorne Ecological Institute Award for Environmental Achievement and the 2007 George E. Cranmer Award from Colorado Open Lands.

Barry married Gail Nelson in June 1968, and they had two sons: Pennan (1974) and Duncan (1980). Barry was approaching his 2010 retirement from Denver Water when he was killed in a tractor accident on his farm in Hawaii.