- When I think of Josie, I think about the phrase that Bobby Kennedy used, every act that you do is a tiny ripple of hope.

And the ripples that Josie sent out reached many shores and affected so many people.

- [Speaker] She didn't set out to go into a life of public service.

- I just could see, there were a lot of people whose voices were not heard.

[inspiring music] - [Reynelda] As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains they stood beside, as visionary as the views of the Grand Plains they looked across, the women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion, and the arts, women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse, and these are the stories of Great Colorado Women.

- If you know Josie's story, you know the type of person it took to be the first one to take on a variety of issues.

- She was a very strong environmentalist, and that was at a time where we were at a crossroads in Boulder County.

- [Speaker] She was an educator, a wife and a mother.

- For my mom, it's always about giving a voice to the voiceless.

- She didn't set out to go into a life of public service.

- I ran because I was a voice for lots of people who were not heard.

- She knew the issues.

She was well-versed, very comfortable in the public domain.

- She's determined, she's tenacious.

- And an incredible community leader, who gets things done.

- Never backed off one moment in what she wanted to do.

- She put herself in these leadership roles where she could make a lasting difference.

- [Rollie] She forever changes the landscape and the nature of this community.

[upbeat music] - Josie grew up in a very small town in Oregon.

- [Josie] My father left my mother and me when I was about three years old, I never saw him again.

- [Jean] When things went wrong, her mother would just say, "Just put our heads down and keep working.

And this will come out okay."

- [Josie] My mother and I lived with my aunt.

Well, my aunt and my mom worked as waitresses in the Bus Depot.

- [Jean] She worked in the summers when she was a child, starting when she was pretty young.

- They would work alongside of other families, maybe a father and a son.

And when my mom would go home to her clean bed and a hot cooked meal, she knew that that boy that she had worked alongside of, that he and his father were likely sleeping out under the tree that evening, or maybe in a car that night.

And that really stayed with her.

- I think her working in the fields with migrant kids, that had tremendous impact, just seeing the world really was not an easy place, that there were a lot of people out there that were hurting very, very badly, I think it had a huge impression on her.

- She really wanted to be sure that she was always representing those who are working just as hard, but maybe not having the same opportunities.

She described her mother as having a lot of courage.

- After the war, she met somebody who'd been in the service.

And when he came home, they were married and he adopted me when I was 10.

And he was wonderful to me.

She was the first person in her family to go to college.

- And I attended Eastern Oregon college in La Grande Oregon on a scholarship, I graduated Magna Cum Laude and received a scholarship for graduate school at the University of Wisconsin.

And I met Rollie Heath on my very first day on campus.

The first weekend they had a softball game and a picnic.

He thought he was this hot shot pitcher.

And we were trailing a bit, the bases were loaded and I was up and I hit a home run off of him, and I rounded second.

And he says, he thought to himself, I need to meet this girl, and so we began to date.

We got married in 1961. right after our very short honeymoon, he went right into the army and he began active duty.

And we packed our entire life's belongings and wedding gifts into our U haul trailer and drove to our first post at fifth army headquarters in Chicago.

And later he would be stationed in Germany.

Living in Germany and being in the service was a wonderful time in our life.

And I think in the years, especially when I began to recognize that I needed more.

One of the great sustaining things for me was my book group.

And that's where I first read Feminine Mystique.

And like so many people who read Betty Friedan's work, that click just went off for me.

And that's when I realized I am definitely a feminist.

And you know, it was hard because I was afraid people would think that I didn't like men, I love men.

I love my husband.

I have two boys I love, but I just knew that men are even better when they understand that women have as much to offer equal partners.

And I think that I'm a better wife and I was a better mother when I could find something that really fulfilled me.

- My family lived in Bad Kreuznach, Germany when I was born.

And while we were there only a short time, BK remains a very, very integral part of our whole family's lives.

When I was six months old, my mom and dad had gone over to Austria to go skiing.

- And while I was in Austria, I had a really very, very bad ski accident.

- Last run of the day, she buried her tip in a mogul, the binding did not release.

And unfortunately she broke her leg in seven places, which ended up in two and a half years of her not walking, and at least seven more surgeries.

So it was very, very difficult thing.

- For months, they didn't know if she would ever have a chance to walk again.

She not only walked again, she skied again.

- Once we all started skiing as children, she was on the ski slopes with us because she didn't want to miss a thing.

- No matter what the doctors said, that you'll never be able to.

I think she looked at life and said, I'm not gonna give up.

I'm gonna make every day count.

- We ended up being medivaced back because of the treatment on my leg wasn't working.

and Rollie could come back to Charlottesville, Virginia.

and he was a teacher at the judge advocate general school in Charlottesville to University of Virginia.

And I had an excellent hospital where they did a bone graft from my hip to try to fuse the bones in my legs.

So none of the bones rotate anymore, but at least I could walk.

And so we bought our first house.

- [Rollie] I came home shortly after we moved into the house and said Josie, I think I really want to get out of the army.

- I said, well, we haven't even had Christmas in our first house.

Let's not talk about it till after Christmas.

- So on January 1st, I said, I really want to do this.

She helped me put a resume together.

And we ended up in Colorado.

- I'm a westerner at heart.

And so the very idea that we were coming west was exciting to me, I just love the spirit of the west.

A friend of mine said, you know, you want to think about running for county commissioner.

And so four Democrats came forward and we ran against each other.

- There was still the talk in those days about, well, a woman can't win the county commissioner's seat.

- Every local democratic official supported one of the other candidates.

And they said it was because I could never win.

They thought it was a nice girl, but I could never win.

- If you ran for office as a woman, you were under a lot of scrutiny.

Thanks got sometimes very negative.

You have three children like Josie does, what's she doing running for office?

- We were victorious, but it was amazing because the very next day, the other county commissioner, who was a Democrat Jack Murphy, who had been on the board for 18 years called me up.

And he said, I didn't support you, but I'm supporting you now because it's a three member board and you need to count to two.

- She probably had a bigger impact on Boulder county than any other county commissioner has even come close to.

All of the environmental programs that she was instrumental in establishing.

- That was at a time in 1976, where we were at a crossroads.

And there was a great debate going on about our land use and how Boulder county would grow into the future.

- We had a county comprehensive plan and the job of the commissioners was to implement that plan.

So when I got in office, I looked at the plan and I thought it was wonderful.

It showed where critical wildlife patterns would be, and that we would have separate cities, not cities just running into each other.

- And she felt very strongly as I did that economic development goes hand in hand with environmental protection and environmental conservation.

- I went out and met with every CEO of a business.

They said, we want a skilled workforce and we want transportation so we can move goods.

- She was one of the reasons that the economy in Boulder county has become what it is today, which is just hot all the time.

I think one of the joys of her life, one of the great joys was to have been invited to her daughter's graduation from Scripps college, as the keynote speaker for the graduation.

- It happened to be on Mother's Day.

And I actually wasn't even there for the decision to have her become our speaker.

I had been away at a soccer game and I came back and there was a note under my door that said, oh, the senior class, you know, met tonight.

We decided since it's Mother's Day, we wanted somebody's mom to be our speaker.

And we've decided that it should be your mom.

- So I'm sitting next to my father who was very ill at this stage of the game and had never heard Josie speak, but halfway through it, he elbows me and he says, she's okay, isn't she.

I said, yeah, Dad, she's okay.

- And I remember the president of Scripps college and he comes to the podium and he says, well, she's gonna run for bigger office.

And sure enough, a couple months later is when she decided to launch her exploratory campaign.

- So when Josie decided to run for Senate, it was 1990, it was still a man's world.

And it was particularly a man's world when you think about power and influence and control, and who gets to be a leader.

- Josie was the only woman running in the whole country.

And there were only two women in the United States Senate at the time.

- It took some glass ceiling breaking just to get people to accept the fact that a woman can run for higher office like that for the United States Senate.

There was a lot of negative feeling about women in politics.

- Unless women took the risk, unless women put themselves in a position to try to prove that women can do it.

It wouldn't happen.

And she was there and she was ready, and she said, why not?

Let's go.

- I ran for the United States Senate, because I cared passionately about some issue.

- And those issues for me are balancing the budget and national health care and the kinds of advocacy for kids and families and the environment that this country needs and getting the economy going again.

- Just the entire time was a total underdog, complete underdog and the underdog story throughout.

So there was a scrappiness and vibrancy to the campaign and this momentum that had to keep building.

- It was a campaign that we ran as a grassroots effort across the state with thousands of volunteers.

- She had an incredible ability to communicate.

And so she was someone I think voters could really connect with and get inspired by.

- She surprised the entire political world the night of the caucuses, because she beat the man who is the head of the democratic party in the state.

And suddenly Josie went from that lady from Boulder to the leading candidate for the democratic nomination for the United States Senate in 1990.

- And so no matter where we were in the state, would be in hunting season in Gunnison at a diner in the morning.

We could be in Colorado Springs on the front, no matter where we were.

She could find a connection with people who you might think would be really different from her.

because they want to have a title or do something.

And really for my mom, it's always about giving a voice to the voiceless.

- I felt like I ran because I was a voice for lots who were not heard, not only women, but people who perhaps had been discounted, dismissed, for the environment for clean air and clean water and children, things I cared deeply about.

- She pictured another woman in the United States Senate, and what that could mean for history.

- The year that I was born, there were two women in the United States Senate.

I'm 54 years old, and there are two women in the United States Senate.

We're not ready to wait.

We're a great country and we need to take it back.

- We all pictured it.

So it was very difficult to lose that race.

- You fight for things that you believe in.

And sometimes you come out on the winning side and sometimes you don't, but you did things in the right way for the right reasons.

- I think Josie, had she won that US Senate race, could have been the first female United States president.

And of course, we're still waiting for that.

It made a statement that women are in this now for the long haul.

- It was an incredible experience.

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

- It's not easy, but she is very, very resilient.

- During my campaign, Ron Brown, who was the chairman of the democratic national committee, came out for me and Ron Brown and I really became friends.

And he was the chair of the Harvard Kennedy school policy committee.

And so after I lost the election, he called and asked me to come to Harvard and teach at the Kennedy school.

And I said, no, because I'd been gone for a year.

I hadn't really been in my family.

I said no.

- The irony is she turned it down and had it be convinced to do it, which she did, and she was terrific there.

- At the Kennedy school, you teach in a subject area, and I chose national service.

And I brought in Harris Wofford who helped John F. Kennedy come up with the idea for Peace Corps.

And I had a wonderful time at Harvard teaching national service.

- So Josie is in Boston and she sees these young people out, serving in the community and wondered, why don't we have that in Denver?

Why can't young people serve and have these benefits?

So she came back to Colorado after teaching and decided to start mile high youth Corps.

It's based on the very successful model of the civilian conservation Corps of the thirties.

So the young people earn a paycheck, earn an American scholarship.

They're earning certifications.

If they need a high school equivalency diploma, they can earn that too.

There's so much impact that has come both in terms of the way the youth have been impacted, and in our communities.

29 years later, it's still going, still thriving.

- When I had the opportunity to work at the White House, I worked in developing the national service program that became the Americorps.

In Americorps, you as a volunteer, and you can be any age, and have any background, and you can be located into a position that needs volunteers.

It's a wonderful way for people to feel pride in what they can do.

And I'm still very proud of what AmeriCorps volunteers do all around the country.

- The importance of finding people that you care about, finding a community that you care about and getting engaged some way somehow, because that's how lifelong friendships are made.

That's how changes are made in their community.

And it is easy to do the big things when you spend your time doing all the little things that matter.

- Josie is really the defacto founder of the Boulder community foundation she started a few years after its inception.

- She worked hard on all the issues that she'd always cared about, whether it was environmental issues or issues helping low income people.

- So the Boulder community foundation inspires ideas and ignites action to improve the quality of life for Boulder county residents.

- I've been on the board earlier and it was floundering.

And I thought, gosh, it's such a great concept.

I said, you know, let's give it a try, just to see if we can make it here.

And they said, well, would you take the lead on that?

And I said, I'll try to help see if we can get it going.

So I took on that job just as a temporary job.

- And when she took over, she put it on a sustainable financial basis, which is very difficult.

It became the best known non-profit actor in Boulder county.

- The work that the foundation did under her leadership has changed more lives than many politicians do in their lifetime.

- In 1999, when there was this unease about the new millennium.

- You know everybody was talking about Y2K and how all these bad things were gonna happen.

And I thought, you know, it'd be fun to have something to think about that'd be positive.

- Josie came up with the idea to create a millennium trust, to encourage everyone in Boulder county, to give their last hour of income, to create a fund that would fund projects into the next millennium.

- To seed something for the future.

- She rounded up trustees, staff, community leaders, business leaders, and schoolchildren to encourage people to contribute to this trust.

And the goal was to raise a million dollars.

- We ended up raising $1,800,000, over 7,000 donors.

- Including many schoolchildren who gave their allowance.

That millennium trust, still today, every year 20 names are drawn out of a fishbowl.

- And they would decide what's the biggest need in Boulder county.

- And over a million dollars has been given today from the millennium trust.

Another program at the community foundation that Josie spearheaded that was really forward-thinking is called Pledge 1%.

Boulder is a very entrepreneurial community with a lot of startups based there.

Josie decided that we could help that community of startups connect with the Boulder community.

So she met with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

We launched this pledge 1% initiative to get startups to pledge 1% of their equity.

- That if they went public, that 1% would come back to the community and we would give it out to things they care about - It became a model for the rest of the country.

To date, Pledge 1% has contributed over $11 million to Boulder county nonprofits.

In 2008, Josie decided that we wanted to be a more transformational foundation.

- And perhaps our most important leadership works so far, I think, is on the tough task of closing the achievement gap in this county.

- We came to realize that the community that we were really trying to address was the Latino community, because the gap was really between Latino kids and Anglo kids.

- In this incredibly well-educated county where we treasure education in so many ways, we have one of the largest achievement gaps in the whole state of Colorado.

- We decided to launch a program, which later grew into its own nonprofit called ELPASO, which stands for Engaged Latino Parents, Advancing Student Outcomes.

And what ELPASO is, is it's really a movement to reach Latino parents and give them the tools and the education and the resources to be an advocate for their children's education.

Parents who've gone through the program have said they feel like they are equipped to be leaders in the community.

It has been incredibly successful.

And over 4,000 families have been reached through this program.

- When Josie took on the presidency of the Boulder foundation, it was a very small, just an infant of an agency.

And three decades later is one of the most prominent community foundations in the country.

So for the centennial of community foundations, then president Obama held a day long forum on community foundations at the White House.

- They asked Josie to be the keynote speaker.

I think that tells you all that you want to know about the impact she's had.

- Josie decided that she wanted to leave as a lasting legacy, that she would raise a million dollars for her retirement to mark the 25th anniversary of the community foundation.

Of course, we threw her a huge retirement party and pretty much everybody in the community attended and honored Josie.

On the day of her retirement party, she was within $30,000 of her goal and we were all thrilled, but she wasn't ready to call it quits.

So in true Josie fashion, she worked the phones that day.

And by the time of the party, she had hit her million dollar goal and was able to announce it.

- Josie several years ago is hiking in the Grand Canyon, became dehydrated, ended up with a kidney infection, which became sepsis, which sent her into septic shock.

- And basically was given 1% chance to live.

- Her family gathered from all over the country and stood vigil as her organs were going into failure.

- The doctors who treated her We're just flabbergasted that she made it through that.

- I mean, the doctor said to me, Rollie there is no medical reason that your wife was alive.

It was her will to live and knowing that she had things to do.

- Shortly after going through that and getting through most everything, she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer.

And again, she just had the courage to face it head on and do absolutely everything that can be done about it.

She'd made it through that too.

- And she has just an incredible passion for life.

- Josie was recently honored by having a trail named after her.

- They named the Josie Heath trail.

And in honor of frankly, all the things she did around land use and open space and just what a great county commissioner she was.

And it was just, we go up often.

- The outdoors has been a pivotal part of our family life.

It was certainly a key piece of my mom's upbringing in Oregon.

You know, just being on a trail, being somewhere with people that you love.

- My mom always liked to hike.

She climbed many of the mountains and the Northwest.

And so we camped and hiked and just did all kinds of outside things together, it was a very happy time.

- The trail dedication ceremony Josie pointed out that she was particularly thrilled that it was a historic all women group of Boulder county commissioners who dedicate the trail in her honor.

- She was involved in women's issues from day one.

- I said to women, you're the only person in charge of your life.

And even though it feels like a lot of other people are in charge, in the end, what you decide to do, how you decide to speak up, how you live your life.

It's just up to you, only up to.

- I can't tell you how many times I'm somewhere and somebody says Josie Heath is my all time favorite person in the world.

- She's an ordinary woman who just felt compelled to serve at heart.

She's a wife and a mother and a friend.

- I'm most proud of, I was a good mom, a good grandmother, and I was a good wife and a good friend.

I'm also proud that I took some risks to follow my heart.

- Josie's legacy is in the lives of so many women who went on to do so many great things, inspired by her and led by the picture of a woman standing up, of a woman being confident.

And I think that's what Josie's life has been all about.

- Those are the types of things that I look on as being her greatest achievements, not so much the titles but the inspiration for various kinds of programs and individuals We are a better country, we're a better community When women from both sides of the aisle are at the table.

They bring their own lived experience, and I want them to feel they have advocates and I'm proud to have been an advocate.