ROREX: I went in to talk to them, listened to their story, why they wanted to. Even she was surprised, though, when two months after she took office, two men from Colorado Springs requested a marriage license. We didn't know how to run a campaign.īLACK: But Boulder was becoming a center for counterculture in the West, and young progressive voters helped elect her. But she was a feminist and ready to shake things up.ĬLELA ROREX: I was an anomaly. Though her father had held the same position in Steamboat Springs, Colo., where she grew up, she had no real experience. NOEL BLACK, BYLINE: She was only 31 years old when Clela Rorex was elected as the Boulder County clerk in 1975. Noel Black, host of the podcast 'Lost Highways' from History Colorado, has this remembrance.
An unlikely hero of the early struggle for same-sex marriage has died.
