Bob Loup helped build local Jewish community

Whether it was overseas or at home, Robert “Bob” Loup worked tirelessly to protect and further the interests of the Jewish community, rescuing refugees from Ethiopia, organizing a rally in Loup Washington, D.C., against international oppression and helping save Denver’s Jewish Community Center.

His wife told a tale that he and former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart used an Etch A Sketch to avoid surveillance as they communicated while in Russia trying to free Soviet Jews.

In Denver, he cultivated the Hilltop neighborhood though his homebuilding business and was always there to lend a hand to someone in need, be it a homeless person or a cab driver he had just met.

Loup died Thursday at age 87.

“You never felt like he didn’t have time,” said Kathy Neustadt, a close friend who worked with Loup on the board of Denver’s Jewish Community Center. “There wasn’t a call he wouldn’t make. You just felt so cared for by him. He really had a magical quality about him in an incredibly humble way.”

Loup’s family said the patriarch, among the nation’s leading Jewish philanthropists and who had four children and eight grandchildren, died after battling through end-of-life chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He had survived several bouts of pneumonia.

“He was bigger than life,” his wife, Robyn, said Friday. “His personal relationships were as powerful as the big things he did in this world. He was all about spirit at the end.”

Loup grew up in the Jewish community of west Denver as the son of a Romanian immigrant. He graduated from the University of Colorado and then served in the Air Force during the Korean War.

He launched a homebuilding and development business that operated in the Denver area and throughout the nation, creating — among other commercial and residential ventures — The Ranch Country Club in Westminster. Around 1991, he began working with his son, Jim.

“We’re still in business,” Jim Loup said. “My dad was still involved in the business up until the time in died.”

Those close to Loup, however, say he was best known for humanitarian and community work. He was the president of the Allied Jewish Federation, the founder of Shalom Park and chairman of the United Jewish Appeal — an international organization that resettled refugees — among other service organizations.

In one photograph from a rally in Washington, he was captured sitting next to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the noted civil rights activist and Democrat from Georgia.

Loup is perhaps most recognized in Denver for saving the Jewish Community Center — which is named after him — off Leetsdale Drive from financial doom. He was reluctant to accept recognition for his work, family and friends say.

His fundraising skills were unmatched.

“No one wanted to say no to Bob,” Neustadt said. “Whether he was asking for a donation, asking you to join a cause — to join an event — you not only couldn’t say no, you didn’t want to.”

It was that spirit that made him a mainstay in Denver, known for putting the community ahead of himself.

“We would go out to baseball games and dinner with him,” said Jacob Loup, his 32-year-old grandson. “Everywhere he went, he would be ambushed by 15 different people who wanted to shake his hand.”

In November, one of Denver’s Jewish community’s highest awards was renamed in Loup’s honor.

“Bob was the ultimate mensch,” said Stuart Raynor, former CEO of the Denver JCC. “He was just always giving.”

Raynor remembered a time in 2007, just after he had starting working at the Denver JCC, when Loup called him frantically. Loup had just bought 30 to 40 Colorado Rockies tickets for summer camp staffers and something was wrong.

“Nobody asked him, but he thought they would have a good time,” Raynor said. “But he called me in a panic because he forgot to give them money for food and popcorn so they could have a good time. He just never forgot little things.”

A public memorial service is set for noon Sunday at the Hebrew Educational Alliance, 3600 S. Ivanhoe St. Interment will be at Mt. Nebo Memorial Park.