Former Denver Mayor Federico Peña rose to address the overflow crowd at Rodef Shalom on Nov. 3 to eulogize his longtime friend and colleague, Stephen Kaplan.
“Steve was the person you went to when you needed someone to help you see things more clearly,” Peña said. “He never made a production of helping. He simply showed up.”
Kaplan died on Nov. 1 at the age of 79, after a lengthy battle with interstitial lung disease.
Looking at Kaplan’s children and grandchildren, Peña said:
“Your father and grandfather accomplished extraordinary things.
“He helped shape the city of Denver, served his country, negotiated an important international agreement, and mentored generations of lawyers.”
Peña was tethered to Kaplan on many fronts. First, when Peña was mayor of Denver he appointed Kaplan as city attorney. Then, when Peña become Secretary of Transportation under the Clinton administration, he hired Kaplan as general counsel for the Dept. of Transportation.
That important international agreement occurred in 1992.
“The United States government had been trying to negotiate a new aviation treaty with Canada, allowing for US airlines and Canadian airlines to go back and forth,” Peña told the IJN.
“Today the aviation traffic between the United States and Canada is the largest between any two nations in the world.
“There are 50-something airports around the United States that have traffic to Canada. If you go to DIA, there are all kinds of flights that go to Canada from Denver.
“Steve did that.”
Other eulogists at the funeral service included Rabbis Rachel Kobrin and Sara Gilbert, Leslie Kaplan and Michael Kaplan, Katherine Archuleta, Talia Horowitz and law partners Peter Kirsch and John Putnam, and former law partner Sarah Rockwell.
Feldman Mortuary made the funeral arrangements. After the service at Rodef Shalom, interment followed at Emanuel Cemetery.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kaplan earned his undergraduate and law degrees at Harvard.
Peña told the IJN:
“The most important thing was that whenever I was having challenges anywhere, in Denver or in Washington, he was the kind of guy who could come in and talk to me.
“And within a few minutes, he would calm me down and assure me that everything was going to be OK.”
When Kaplan concluded that work with Peña in DC, Kaplan returned to Denver and in 2003 co-founded the Kaplan Kirsch law firm with Peter Kirsch and four others.
Kirsch had one ritual — a game, sort of — when he and Kaplan would leave their office at lunch time.
“We have the one block rule,” Kirsch told the IJN, “which is to see if anybody could walk down the 16th Street Mall for more than a block without somebody calling to Steven wanting to talk to him.
“We never, never beat the one block rule. We never got more than a block because he knows everybody. Not only has he been here 50 years, but he just collected people in a way that’s very charming.
“He had a great relationship with people in that people didn’t defer to him and call him as sort of a great man. We certainly know of people in the Denver community who are sort of untouchable.
“That’s not Steve. He was so down to earth that anybody could ask him for advice and wouldn’t feel intimidated by it.”
Kaplan amassed this legion with a simple practice.
“He never insisted on taking the credit,” Kirsch told the IJN. “Everybody else got the credit, and that makes him lovable.
“He almost never told you what to do. He would engage in conversations, and the end result was whoever he was talking to would feel correctly that they had made the decision.”
Through his work in Denver, Kaplan was regarded as a visionary. His influence in the Peña administrations touched the creation of DIA, Union Station, the Denver Convention Center and Coors Field.
“He never talked about how brilliant he was,” Peña told the IJN.
“He just did it. He just did it.
“His fellow partners spoke eloquently at his service about how he looked at the world. But the bottom line is in private practice, he told his fellow lawyers that they wanted to be involved in projects and issues that were good for the city.
“It wasn’t just about making money. It was about doing good. And that was a very unique attitude.”
Kaplan was active in a wide range of civic and charitable organizations, including as president of the Colorado I have a Dream Foundation.
He was also on the boards of the Denver Zoo, Denver Children’s Museum and SafeHouse.
At the time of his passing, he was a member of the board of directors of Conservation Colorado.
As late as Friday, Oct. 30, Kaplan was in his hospital bed, at work. Two days later, he was dead.
Kirsch told the IJN: “I was in the middle of writing the presentation I made at the service. There’s muscle memory, and there’s also brain memory. I was writing something that was hard. I said, ‘I better check with Steve and see if this is OK.’ [Kirsch laughs] “That’s just how we practiced.
“And now he’s not there.”
Kaplan was married to the late Jeanne Slavin Kaplan, who passed away in November, 2023.
Survivors are children Leslie (Joe Heitkamp) Kaplan and Michael (Alexandra Woods) Kaplan; and grandchildren Sammy and Sophie Heitkamp and Morris and Zev Kaplan.
Contributions may be made to the Kaplan Kirsch Fund through The Denver Foundation.
© IJN 2026
