Even I knew Tina Lewis and her sacred place in this community, the best of the Park City we know today.
I know journalistically what she helped build — indeed, led in the construction of the modern cornerstone. I know by listening closely to people who know what she did, by observation in public places and events, by reading my own paper. It’s all there.
I also got to chat with her several times, of course not realizing how fortunate I was. I picked up grace as well as patience, a sense of humor, a caretaker’s heart for the past, a warmth for community beyond one’s clique or momentary battle, and uncommon intelligence. I don’t think I read more than was there in the person. I liked her very much.
Older residents would know her a lot better than newcomers or even people who came around the millennium. She was most active here in that rich period between Old Town still largely boarded up and the dawning of Park City’s Olympian dreams, which she helped bring to life.
This was back when a brigade would be the very best way to move 5,000 books from Main Street a mile to the new library at City Park, practically everyone in town passing those tomes like buckets as if the house were on fire. She organized that in 1982 after basically saving the new library building, once the hospital. The library since has moved to the old high school. The recycling of historic buildings, an old school to city hall, old city hall/jail/fire station to history museum, and so on, seems to be a foundational principle she established.
An early anecdote is emblematic. Sometime after moving here in 1973, she and some friends discovered old, cast-off streetlights stacked behind the firehouse and used them to replace the butt ugly modern monstrosities UDOT favored along Main Street. That might have set the tone right then.
Lewis was a transitional figure, for sure. She helped modernize and energize the tired town she fell in love with as a teenager and moved to in her 20s. And from the beginning she championed historic preservation. I think she saw how the two fit together.
She had a hand in all the big stuff — landing Sundance, the Olympics, starting a host of events, Miners Day probably the biggest.
She took her turn on the City Council in 1979 and served through the ’80s. She saved buildings, initiated a historic district commission, and helped write the code. She did a lot to make Park City a tourist haven at the same time, mainly through events that made the place more fun. She even designed the city’s logo.
I met her my first week at the paper last September when the Park City Chamber/Bureau honored her with The Myles Rademan Spirit of Hospitality Award on her 77th birthday.
Rademan, a friend from that era who was a city planner then, said at the award presentation she was a visionary force in the rebirth of Park City.
Deb Archer, a former executive director of the chamber, called Lewis the “soul of the community.”
You might not know this if you arrived in the mid-’90s or later, but what contemporaries labeled the “Tina touch,” usually with a smile, left her imprint everywhere.
She was a mentor for Sally Elliott, who shares Lewis’ passion for historic preservation and took her own turns on the Park City and Summit County councils. That was awhile ago. Even proteges have at least partly retired.
Teri Orr, a former editor of The Park Record and a longtime columnist, referred to Lewis’ early sewing skills in a Placemakers feature for the paper in February as a metaphor for her work stitching together a better future for the near ghost town half a century ago.
Orr highlighted Lewis’ ability to get government types, stubborn landowners and everyone else in town behind one or another project she’d either started herself or threw herself into because it was a good idea — generally to save a historic building or start a cool event that would outlive her.
Think of her if you go to Savor the Summit. Yep, she started that one, too.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.