Constance “Connie” Marie Paris was — like many girls — hypnotized by the Beatles, so when John, Paul, George and Ringo played at Red Rocks on Aug. 23, 1964, she was in the amphitheater gasping for air and jumping up and down with five other Englewood High School freshman girls.
Connie Paris front, center looking at camera at 1964 Beatles concert
(Courtesy of Diane Riechert)
Paris loved to be around people and she was friendly to a fault. She had been in Campfire Girls and was very active at her church.
The vivacious girl liked to water ski. She studied hard enough to carry a 3.4 grade point average, but not so much that she missed out on school and church events. She joined the pep club and loved going to football games with a large group of friends.
Connie was a beautiful girl with a matching personality, said her friend Diane Riechert, who met Connie in the seventh grade and was a close friend through high school. When a group of girls got together and started making prank calls, Connie said they should be careful not to hurt anybody.
She loved to curl her “honey, wheat-colored” hair every night, her mother, Mary Lou Paris, 85, said. On one camping trip to Jackson Lake her daughter had to improvise. She used small metal orange juice cans as the curlers. She got so upset when mosquitoes swarmed around her all night.
On a Friday night, she recalled many times that Connie and her friends would come home from a football game and change their clothes in her house on Lincoln Street because of its proximity to the high school so they could go to a dance together.
In March of 1968, Connie was only two months from graduating from high school and had spoken about her plans to go to a community college and some day work in a medical research laboratory.
Connie had two younger brothers, Chris, then 15, and Jeff, then 10. Jeff loved his older sister, who would often come to his defense during squabbles with his older brother, Mary Lou Riechert recalled. Connie had a running competition with her dad, a post office carrier, over crossword puzzles.
Mary Lou Paris said she and her husband would never argue with each other in front of their three kids.
Connie had just been hired as a waitress at a restaurant with a Robin Hood theme at the Cinderella City shopping center. She had to wear a funky hat with a feather and moccasins.