Businessman, philanthropist leaves legacy in adopted home of Denver
Frederic C. Hamilton, who left a legendary trail of business and philanthropy reflected by the shining Denver Art Museum building that bears his name, died Friday following a brief illness just days after turning 89.
Though a native of Columbus, Ohio, Hamilton carved a path from the Texas oil fields to his adopted home of Denver, where the Hamilton Brothers Oil Co. became a global force in the industry. That success, as well as later business ventures in the investment field, fueled philanthropic interests that ranged from youth programs to education to art.
In 2014, Hamilton was named Citizen of the West, the award sponsored by the National Western Stock Show that honors the pioneering spirit and, as much as anything, seemed to encompass the man and what he stood for.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who recruited the Republican donor as
finance chair of every campaign he ran, recalls Hamilton as a man in the tradition of Cowboy Ethics — the popular code of courage, pride and principle.
“He epitomized that — all those Western values,” Hickenlooper said. “You’re a part of a community, and community matters.”
Hamilton also had a backstory with the kind of twist that captures the imagination. Lacking direction early in his adult life, his mother cut off his allowance and told him to get a job.
He learned the oil business as a roughneck and derrick rigger, and eventually picked up other aspects that led to him going into business for himself.
He and his late brother, Ferris, started a contract drilling company.
“This is the piece of it we all loved, because it’s what you want to believe in life,” said Lisa Ireland, Fred’s business partner with The Hamilton Companies, the investment firm he created in the 1990s. “He and his brother weren’t the best behaved young men, they didn’t always graduate at the top of their class — much less graduate. But they were at one time told by their mother that it’s time you make something of yourself. With a $5,000 loan from her, they basically built Hamilton Brothers.”
When they moved their company to Denver in 1962, business really took off with a venture that two years later found them tapping an oil field in the North Sea that proved a key element of their success.
“I’d like people to remember me as hardworking and that I worked all my life,” he told The Denver Post for a 2014 profile. “I’d like to be known as someone with integrity. That I had understanding and sensitivity to people. And as someone cognizant that you have to give back to the system when you’ve been successful. You can’t just take. You have to give back.”
For the past 25 years, he focused on his investment company and on philanthropic work, particularly with the Denver Art Museum, where he chaired the board for many years and remained chairman emeritus — and intensely involved with operations — until his death.
Lanny Martin, the museum’s current board chair, said Hamilton lent a businessman’s careful eye to a museum he insisted operate in the black — something illustrated by his approach to the $110 million Frederic C. Hamilton Building, the museum expansion that opened in 2006.
Upon learning that the project could receive support from revenue bonds issued by the city and county, Hamilton maintained that the museum must at least match that amount in an endowment to support its operation. Hamilton helped raise far more than the amount of the revenue bonds — further testimony to his touch as a philanthropist who not only committed his own funds, but brought other supporters along with him.
Martin recalls that when the museum launched competition for architects to design the building that would bear his name, Hamilton had a traditional approach in mind. But after interviewing several architects and visiting their works around the world, two of the three finalists represented a more avant-garde approach — and in the end, Daniel Libeskind’s distinctive design won out.
“Through that whole process, people were thinking Fred would never go along with this design, but he did,” Martin said. “It was the right thing for the right time.”
Hamilton’s support of institutions and causes ran wide. He was involved with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Graland Country Day School and even the prep school that expelled him early in his life. He also has been involved with Children’s Hospital Colorado and the Anschutz Medical Campus, where he donated to cancer research and study of macular degeneration, which impacted his own vision.
He loved the outdoors, an affinity reflected in his appreciation — and collection — of French Impressionist landscape paintings. He bequeathed 22 works to the Denver Art Museum in 2014 — something museum director Christoph Heinrich calls a “pivotal moment” that suddenly gave Denver one of the best such collections in the country.
“I think in terms of the art, he just collected what he loved,” Heinrich said. “He loved landscapes, and when he’d show them to you, he’d tell you stories about them. It would be clear it was a painting that he lived with. It wasn’t only decoration, it was a part of his life.”
Hickenlooper calls that life “rock solid.”
“He didn’t grow up in Colorado, but he cared about his adopted state as much as anybody could,” the governor said.
Hamilton is survived by his wife, Jane, and their four children, Christy H. McGraw, Fred Jr., Crawford and Tom; and 10 grandchildren. A service has been scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday at the Denver Art Museum.