When Sally met Harry, it was love at first sight. Or as Harry says with a little bit of a mischievous smile, “It was lust at first sight.”

Sitting in their living room in the Bar-K, Harry and Sally Hempy fall into a comfortable discussion about the way their lives meandered down paths unforeseen, and how the blessings and the love that they share send ripples outward into the worlds they live in and have passed through.

The Hempy’s moved into the Bar-K in 1997, and as they broke down their personal history in the area, it became clear how intertwined they are with the Bar-K area, and how much of a cornerstone they have been in the development of this community. Harry and Sally’s hard work is apparent throughout the house, and the contributions of their neighbors is built into the fabric of their home as well.

Harry is seventy-six years old, and Sally is eighty-five. They have recently moved into Boulder, as health issues have limited their functionality.

“We never thought we would be leaving here, did we,” said Sally, looking at Harry.

They have memories to hold onto now, of the times they spent with their family. “I remember this house being nothing but bedroll city for Christmas time,” said Sally, “whether Harry’s kids were here from Kentucky, or just mine were around, and spouses and so forth, there were bedrolls… for a week, here at Christmas time.”

Sally pointed to a hook screwed into the ceiling above us. “See that hook up there? That was our Christmas tree the first year,” she said, “and two big guys down at the Merc, Harry and I brought it home on the Forerunner, and hooked it up to the…”

Sally trailed off and looked at Harry, so Harry continued the story. “We had a pulley. That tree must have weighed three hundred pounds, and we couldn’t get it in,” he said, “it was like this at the bottom,” he said, holding out his hands the way a fisherman does to show how big the fish was. The tree had been about ten inches across the circumference of the trunk, which may seem like an old mountain fable, but in the pine forests of Colorado, it is the way it is. It had ended up being fourteen feet, one inch tall, and the Hempy’s would have a tree with those dimensions every Christmas after that.

Sally has pictures and videos of the tree from that year, and of their forty-two years together, labeled and organized by year.

They met through the Cub Scouts. “I was a den mother to his oldest boy, and he was Webelos leader to my youngest child. And we met at a pack meeting,” she said.

Harry recalls, “I had already spotted Sally from across the room. She had on her yellow Den Mother shirt and blue jeans, so I noticed her right away. I think she noticed me too. I was in my boy scout leader uniform.”

Their first date was a Chuck Mangione concert.

They got onto Harry’s motorcycle, a Honda 350, and drove all over town, a little bit stoned. “Down the canyons,” said Sally. “When you’re young you don’t really think about it.” The year was 1976.

Sally got her degree in political science from Ohio State University before moving to Boulder with her two children, where she worked on political campaigns. “Strong right-wing Republican. My first campaign was in 1952. And I rang doorbells and passed out buttons for ‘I like Ike.’ And I was a precinct leader and ran campaigns in Ohio.”

Harry came from a political background as well. “I actually remember the Republican convention of 1952… I asked my dad what the difference was between Republican and Democrat, and he said ‘well the republicans, you know, the bankers, kind of the rich people. And Democrats are everybody else,’” he said, “and right then I knew I was a Democrat.”

“Now the parties have changed,” said Sally, with a hint of sadness.

“You’ve changed.” Responded Harry gently.

Sally would eventually quit the Republican Party. She and Harry both served on the Democratic Election boards in Tucson and Boulder. Harry was the secretary of the Democratic Party, before quitting the party. “I got out of the Democratic Party here because they’re really only interested in nominating people for office who had a lot of money, and could raise a lot of money, and win with their money,” he said, “I said ‘screw that.’ So, I quit. They wouldn’t think about limiting their campaign expenditures.”

Harry worked at IBM, which took him from New York to Boulder, to Tucson, and back to Boulder. His career at IBM lasted for forty years, from 1968 to September 2008 when he retired. Recently he’s picked up PickleBall, which he plays at the YMCA in Boulder. He has always been athletic and had previously started a PickleBall group in Jamestown.

Sally and Harry were also the force behind the community garden in the Bar-K, helping to plan and build the garden in 2009 and 2010. Harry explained that he had been concerned that the “agricultural world would fall apart,” and he wanted to ensure a local food supply.

Always politically inclined, Harry joined the Green Party of Colorado in 2014. That year, as the Green party candidate, he ran for Governor of Colorado. “I got about twenty-seven thousand votes,” he said. Which was a big increase from previous Green Party candidate campaigns. “From that campaign, and another one I helped with the following year, the registration in Colorado got up to fourteen thousand people. Which was twice as much as it had been a couple years before.”

Harry and Sally’s love story is undeniably etched into the fabric of a little corner of the Peak to Peak. May we all learn to live and love a little brighter because of their story.