A gentle woman full of spunk and intellectual curiosity from a different era. Faye Schayer enlivened our community with her avid interest in its history, leading her to play a major role in the development of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society and the Mizel Museum. But her personality added a dimension far beyond her interest. Always a partner with her late husband Charles M. Schayer in her communal endeavors, Faye added spice and color to everything she touched. She made an organization a to be.
We missed her in the later years, stricken as she was, and the difference in our community has been noticeable. They say no one is indispensable a completely misleading idea. There is no one to replace either Faye Schayer or her late husband Chuck. They were natural bridge builders. They spanned the traditional and the liberal Jewish communities; the worlds of commerce and of academic philanthropy; and they befriended people of all ages. Generation gap was not part of their lives.
Some people are tolerant by choice, because they think it is right; and some are tolerant by nature, because they like people. The Schayers gravitated toward those causes that would emphasize underlying similarities rather than differences.
How Faye and Chuck Schayer would have been delighted to see Denver Jewry mark its 150th anniversary this year. The original Charles M. Schayer came to Colorado by covered wagon in 1862 and became an early president of Temple Emanuel. His son Milton M. Schayer was born in Denver in 1876, the year Colorado became a state, and had an illustrious career in commerce and activism, including a weekly column in the Intermountain Jewish News in the 1920s. His son Charles and his wife Faye carried the torch, building our community through Jewish causes and secular ones, such as the Central City Opera and Colorado Symphony.
Faye Schayer was no spectator. She ran a successful business, a network of concession stands, at a time when it was most unusual for women to do that.
Faye Schayer didnt just marry into a pioneer family, she wrote its history; not to mention, she was a second-generation American who understood the immigrant experience personally. The daughter of a Russian immigrant father and an English immigrant mother in Pueblo, Colorado, she came to Colorado history from all sides of her family. There is a reason she became president of the RMJHS and vice-president of the American Historical Society.
A small and dainty woman, full of life, she was both a former ballet dancer and newspaper editor. Art and intellect, kindness and compassion, curiosity and leadership, enterprise and philanthropy well, as we said, Faye Greenberg Schayer was from a different era. She made a lasting contribution and a lasting impression. She is deeply missed.
Read Faye Schyer’s full obituary.
