Emily Griffith’s legacy goes back to the early 1910s when she founded a school that has come to be symbolic with helping kids and adults rise above poverty.
Photo of Emily Griffith, date unknown, copy by Lyn Alweis
Courtesy Denver Public Library Western History Department
Her name is nearly as recognizable in Denver today as it was in the first half of last century.
The mystery behind who really murdered her and her younger sister also lingers.
Emily Griffith was the founder of the Emily Griffith Technical College, once called the Emily Griffith Opportunity School. It has shepherded 1.6 million students to new careers over its 96-year history.
On the morning of June 18, 1947, she and her sister were shot to death in a cabin in Larimer County. The murders have never been solved.
Griffith began her teaching career in a sod school house in Nebraska.
She was born on Feb. 10, 1880 in Cincinatti, Ohio. She graduated from Broken Bow, Neb. in 1895 and attended college in Nebraska and at the Denver Normal and Preparatory School. Her first teaching job was in 1898 at Central school.
She was an eighth grade teacher on the 24th Street School in 1913. Many of the students who attended the school came from impoversished homes.
It is what inspired her to establish the “Opportunity School,” according to an article in 1947 by former Denver Post reporter Alex Murphree.
She recognized that the needs of the children in her class was great but the needs of their older siblings and parents were even greater.
Many didn’t know how to read or write. They had dropped out of school. Griffith first offered night classes for the parents so they could learn after work.
On Sept. 9, 1916 she opened the doors of the “Opportunity School.” It was a free school within the public Denver school system. The school offered trade education for barbers, bakers and plumbers.