Champa Street's Lady

Denver's Champa Street shrilled one day last week with the din of hundreds of urchins pushing their way to the front of the Denver Post building. At the head of the line each youngster was given two ice cream cones, a handful of cakes, a hearty invitation to come up the line again for more. This was the Post's Annual Free Ice Cream & Cake Party for Denver's children. The Post that day front-paged hot weather reports from other parts of the U. S. under the big, black headline: COLORADO IS COOLER. ... It announced plans for the Post's annual sponsorship of a pilgrimage to the Mount of the Holy Cross where religious services are held before a rocky peak on which late melting snows in two ravines form a gigantic white cross. . . . Post delivery trucks continued to block traffic on Champa Street. . . . Everything was as usual. There was nothing to remind the Post reader that notorious Publisher Frederick Gilmer Bonfils had been dead for four months (TIME, Feb. 13); nothing to indicate that instead of "Bon's" bushy grey head bowed over the massive desk in his office, there was now poised the attractive blonde head of his daughter Helen. Following more & more frequent visits to the office since her father's death, she took complete charge last week, although the nominal publisher & editor is William C. Shepherd who was managing editor for 20 years.

As boss of the Post big-framed Helen Bonfils, 38, starts without benefit of practical experience but with a reputation for general good sense and ability. Denver residents who might have looked for a toning-down of the Post's incomparable blatancy were due to be disillusioned. Said practical Miss Bonfils: "Why should there be a change of policy when it has been successful for so long?"

Publisher Bonfils & daughter were mutually devoted. She used to say, when his journalistic escapades aroused criticism: "Papa is so misunderstood." Last week she said: ''Papa's spirit directs the Denver Post today just as much as it did when he was sitting right here." According to Denver legend Helen Bonfils might have been married long ago but for her father "who chased away her suitors because he thought they wanted to marry for money." Denver socialites have snubbed her but last year she was admitted to the Junior League. She might have been a professional actress, had her father permitted it. Until her father's death, Helen Bonfils' keenest interest was the University of Denver's highly successful Civic Theatre in which she acted ably. To her regret, she is a native not of Denver but of Manhattan.

Last week Miss Bonfils and four other executors filed an inventory of her father's estate. It was valued at $8,200,266, mostly in shares of the family's Boma Investment Co. One item of 2,151 capital shares of Colorado-African Expedition Inc. was valued at nothing.

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