Dear Editor:

I wanted to add a little color to the message that Gilpin County Commissioner Linda Isenhart is retiring.

Linda was not just a thoughtful and dedicated Commissioner, she was (and I’m sure is) a loving and caring friend. In 2018, when my poor health and my husband’s recent lengthy hospitalization led us to understand we really could not stay in our beloved mountain home, I was stuck with nearly 20 years’ worth of collected stuff in our garage that needed to be sorted and organized before we could think of putting our house on the market. Neither one of us was capable of doing that physical work.

At a loss, I contacted Linda, whom I had known for years but not well, thinking that in her capacity as Commissioner she might know resources to help us with what seemed like an overwhelming task. And she responded, not as a Commissioner but as a friend: within a week or so she had assembled a team (all known to us, but we hadn’t thought to ask) who swooped into our messy garage and performed superb triage: keep, send to Ermel’s, trash. And she was right there with them. One truck hauled junk to the dump. Linda made sure Ermel’s was open before sending that truck to Central. In a few hours we could actually see walls and floor.

Leaving Gilpin was hard; leaving friends like that is even harder. I can only wish Linda all the happiness in the world in her new, more relaxed life.

Lynn Hirshman

Denton, Texas