Boulder Beat: Paul Danish – Summer 2016
How the Grill got its Name
A 1960s CU alum whowas in the UMC’s AlferdPacker Grill recentlyasked a student if sheknew who Packer was.
“An early CU president?”she repliedhopefully.
How soon they forget.
OK, gather roundye who never heardthe tale, and I’ll sing ofAlferd Packer, and howthe UMC grill came tobear his name.
But first, confessiontime: I had something todo with it. OK, a lot todo with it. The naming,that is. I never met Packer.Fortunately.
First off, Packer wasnot an early CU president.He was a cannibal.Like Hannibal Lecter, onlywith worse manners. And a betterexcuse — he was hungry.
Packer was part of a six-man prospectingparty that got marooned inColorado’s San Juan Mountains in the winter of 1873. Come spring, heemerged alone and surprisingly un-emaciated.He was eventually caught, triedand sentenced to hang for murder.
His claim to fame comes from thesentence of doom pronounced uponhim — as magnificently interpretedand imparted to a credulous media by adrunken bar-keep thusly:
“Stand up, yah man-eatin’ son of abitch, and receive your sintince!... Theywas siven Dimmycrats in Hinsdale County,but you, yah voracious, man-eatin’ sonof a bitch, yah eat five of thim!”
Fast forward to the spring of 1968.I’m sitting in the grill with my BFF,student body president Paul Talmey(A&S’67; MBA’78) (I’m his veep), and acouple of others. Someone at the tableis grousing about the food.
“We otta’ name this place after AlferdPacker,” I said brightly. (It was thencalled the Roaring Fork.)
“We could get the Student Assemblyto do it,” Talmey said.
The Student Assembly was new.Talmey and I had started it.
Five or six hundred students showedup for the next meeting, when I introduceda resolution renaming the grillfor Packer and read the hanging speech.It passed unanimously.
I had a day job at the time — atUnited Press International’s DenverBureau, as did another formerColorado Daily editor, Bob Ewegen(Jour’68; MS’72).
As soon as the vote happened I calledEwegen, who sent a story about it toUPI’s main bureau in New York.
Within 20 minutes it came blastingback on the “A” wire, UPI’s premierbreaking news wire with subscribersall over the world.
The year 1968 was tumultuous. Theworld needed a laugh.
And so did the CU Regents. Theywere so glad to see the students doingsome campus high jinks instead ofoccupying Regent Hall that they immediatelyrenamed the grill for Packer.