Monday, June 10, 2013

Ladies Choice

I've been perusing the Denver Post Archives the last few days and found this article from January 8, 1928.


Step Up Girls, and take your pick. Here are some of the eligibles that are worth looking over and are considered excellent Leap Year prospects. These prominent Denver men have sidestopped the darts of Cupid for a number of years and tho up to date they have been considered invulnerable to the charms of the fair sex, are a little bit wary now that 1928, with its opportunities for women to do their own picking and proposing, is upon them. Will they again prove good dodgers? Left to right, Lawrence Lewis, Orville Dines, Baxter, Lanius, Leut. Harold Bellingham, Willis W. Case Jr, and Carl S. Milliken.

Is this some kind of misogynist joke on the part of the paper? Why do I have the feeling that these men were all considered lacking in someway?

These prominent Denver men have sidestopped the darts of Cupid for a number of years and tho up to date they have been considered invulnerable to the charms of the fair sex....

Oh, right, that sentence. Let's see what I found out about them.


Lawrence Lewis was a Denver lawyer and a US Representative from 1933 until his death in 1943. He was born in 1879, which made him about 49 years old in 1928. He never married so I think we can call him a Confirmed Bachelor.


Orville Dines was another Denver lawyer and I cannot find any information about him but I do know he was the cousin of Courtland Dines who was involved in a Hollywood scandal four years before Orville Dines' picture appeared in this article. Courtland Dines was shot on New Year's day in 1924 by silent movie comedian Mabel Norman's chauffeur. Back then that kind of thing would tarnish your whole family.


Baxter Lanius seems to have made his money in real estate and may have been divorced when he appeared in this article. Although I found nothing on him I did find an obituary for his son.


Leut. Harold Bellingham was the the head of the Denver Naval Recruiting Station in 1926. By 1928 he is listed by the Navy as being on U.S.S. Pecos outside of Shanghai. Now how is that for a joke on the ladies? Belllingham is the man who wasn't there.


I cannot find anything about Willis Case, Jr. He was supposedly killed by his girlfriend in 1934 after he refused to marry her. She then committed suicide.


Carl S. Milliken is the winner in this bunch. He was Colorado Secretary of State from 1921 to 1927. He was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1934 he was Denver's Manager of Safety where he was forced to resign when the Grand Jury ordered an investigation into his office for misuse of funds.


So, ladies, which bachelor  would you have pick?. 

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