News-Press DCCR 8-29-2013
Castle Rock
Douglas County, Colorado • Volume 11, Issue 23
August 29, 2013
Free
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourcastlerocknews.com
Bronze statues missing Art was meant to please hikers, bikers, visitors By Virginia Grantier
vgrantier@ourcoloradonews.com
Margaret Marshall Rhyne, co-founder of Allis Ranch Winery, is an author, marketer and creator of nonprofit foundations, among other pursuits. She does a bit of everything at the Sedalia winery. Photos by Virginia Grantier
Ranch is refuge amid heartache Architect, author create beauty, wonderful wines after loss By Virginia Grantier
vgrantier@ourcoloradonews.com At a recent wine-tasting event in Castle Rock, there was a Sedalia winery, its husband and wife owners there, and it all seemed so perfect — a lovely, carefree life. The winemaker, an architect by day, poured samples of his wines that were aged in, and seem to thrive in, the constantly cool basement of the 100-year-old farmhouse he and she renovated. “It’s creative, and fun, kind of a people thing … kind of a mystery and difficult,” he said about winemaking. And he likes the challenge. “If it was easy, everyone could do it,” he said. He is Dave Rhyne, with father-wisdom gentle eyes and gray locks of hair in the tousled hairstyle of someone who had better things to do this day than comb. It’s an appropriate look for someone reputed to lean into life, heading always in the direction of adventure. She is Margaret Marshall Rhyne, sitting nearby, married to him. Beyond sharing her husband’s zest for things interesting and challenging, she is a mother and grandmother, and still has the model face that people once said should be in Pepsi commercials. And she is an author, public speaker, marketer and magician who takes can’t-be-done-anytime-soon ideas and does them soon. One of her projects: Turning the dream of former Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese — a foundation for grieving children — into a quick reality through her major fundraising efforts. When Griese was 12, he lost his mom to breast cancer.
House project begins
It wasn’t even a thought to start a winery, when, after Dave Rhyne designed and they
Philip S. Miller didn’t remember there being any “good old days” when looking back on a lot of his life: It was all work, no social life, in the Depression. He had long days in his downtown Castle Rock butcher shop, and he ranched, and much later he started the Bank of Douglas — and he remembered in the early days he cleaned the bank, too. He’d mop the bank floor and his wife did the dusting, he recalled in a 1988 Douglas County News-Press interview. “’Bout all I knew was how to work,” he said. Miller, while on the town board, fought for the town’s first sewer system and electricity, both of which lost him customers who didn’t think those things were necessary. He sponsored ball teams, contributed to college scholarships and donated the former city hall building to the town. Then he really started spending money, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building up the Douglas County library system. And at age 100, he passed away. And left more money, a trust fund to be used to make his town even better — and each year, it’s used for such things as helping develop a park, or buying art. That art includes the couple thousand dollars’ worth of small bronze statues the Castle Rock Public Art Commission bought last year and placed around town. But Miller’s sacrifices for his town won’t be seen in the form of some of those statues. Because a different kind of hard worker, or workers, have stolen them. “They must have worked really hard,” Statues continues on Page 24
Dave Rhyne, an architect by day, winemaker other times, and co-founder of Allis Ranch Winery, creates and ages the wines in the 100-year-old Sedalia ranch house he and his wife renovated several years ago. built their dream home in the Sedalia area, they then took on renovating the nearby Allis Ranch house, which had been built from a Sears catalog kit. They took on the beyond-dilapidated structure so they could then rent it to a nice family who could sometimes help them with Alexis, Margaret’s adult daughter from a previous marriage. When Alexis was born, it was initially thought she was “normal.” But she stopped smiling at age 1½ and she never progressed like other children, Margaret said. She stayed at the level of a 3-month-old baby — never could sit up, or feed herself or speak. Starting in November 2004, the couple would spend hundreds of hours renovating the house, which was in an abandoned state, taken over by field mice and wasp nests. They still weren’t done with it when one morning before getting coffee Dave walked into Alexis’ room in 2005 to check
on her and greet her — and found she had passed away. “I felt like half of my soul had been torn away,” said Margaret, who credits Alexis with many things, including teaching her about unconditional love.
Work helped with healing
Finishing the house became a part of the healing. And friends and family were a part of creating a memorial garden in the house’s front yard, with bleeding hearts flowers and forget-me-nots and a bench with Alexis’ name on it in front of the house. Efforts to continue on, despite their grief, included spending time with their remaining grown children and a new grandchild and getting involved in new challenges. An interest in collecting wine progressed to Ranch continues on Page 24
Two of these three quail statues — which were cemented and bolted into a rock along a Rock Park trail — have disappeared. Courtesy photo