Adrian Miller wins second James Beard Award for latest book

BY KIRSTEN DAHL COLLINS SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

Denver food writer Adrian Miller loves pork spareribs so much he journeyed to Missouri to become a certified barbecue judge.

“A dream come true,” he wrote in his latest book, “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.”

When he entered the Kansas City Barbecue Society’s judging classroom, Miller looked around and realized he might wind up wearing an elastic belt.

“I was the only person in the room under ’two fiddy,’” he wrote, referring to the hefty average weight of the student body. “And I was OK with that being my future.”

But as Miller moved around the barbecue competition circuit, he noticed an absence of other Black judges — not to mention contestants. He watched the Food Network’s burgeoning coverage of barbecue, and noticed how few African American chefs were interviewed.

He got another shock in 2018 when he discovered that the first 27 inductees to the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame in Kansas City included only one Black chef and one Native American.

Soon after, he started work on “Black Smoke.” Published in 2021, it recently won Miller his second James Beard Foundation Book Award. The birth of barbecue

A self-confessed ‘cue head, Miller has written a loving, humorous and unsparing account of both barbecue history and the contemporary scene, including profiles of Black and Native American pitmasters who should be much better known than they are. He traces the birth of barbecue, exploring West African styles of cooking which traveled to America along with the slave trade and may have influenced barbecue’s spicy seasoning and sauces. Another influence? The Caribbean’s Indigenous people, who cooked plants and small animals on raised platforms over outdoor fires. Their delicious barbacoas gave American barbecue its name.

Native Americans also contributed. In Virginia, early colonists and their enslaved workers encountered local Indians cooking on raised platforms, on rotating spits and over shallow pits. Black cooks learned these techniques and adapted them, adding a powerful dose of hickory smoke.

In the antebellum South, large barbecues became the celebrations of choice for weddings, parties and political rallies. Whole hogs, ox, kid and other animals — including ‘possums and racoons — were smoked over open pits by expert Black cooks, who sat up all night, turning and basting.

“Even though (barbecue’s) roots in pit-style cooking on plantations are well known,” Miller wrote, “it’s largely attributed to the exceptional taste and unique skill of the White pitmasters who have claimed it as their own.”

He faults current media coverage, which tends to glorify White men as the most influential barbecue chefs. Kind of like claiming that Benny Goodman invented jazz.

In “Black Smoke,” Miller re-distributes the credit where it belongs.

From Denver to the White House and back

Again

The Rosenberry Lecture series will present a talk by

Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller from 1-2 p.m. on March 22 at the History Colorado Center, 1200 Broadway, in Denver.

Miller will provide an entertaining look at the people and places that shaped Colorado’s barbecue traditions, as described in his latest book, “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” There will be a book signing after the talk. “Black Smoke” can be purchased through the History Colorado website, historycolorado.org, or at the museum gift shop. It is also sold at the Tattered Cover. Tickets cost $15 for the general public and $10 for History Colorado members. Tickets can be purchased on History Colorado’s website.

The author, who graduated — appropriately enough — from Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, did not expect to become the bard of barbecue. He went on to get a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., serve as a special assistant in the Clinton White House and as a policy analyst for former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter.

To learn more about Miller and his books, visit adrianemiller.com.

Despite these prestigious posts, his heart lay elsewhere. He began exploring African American foodways with his first book, “Soul Food: the Surprising Story of an American

Colorado recognizes Denver’s unsung hero, Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose

BY CANDY PETROFSKY SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

They say no two roses are alike.

And this is the case for one of Denver’s unsung heroes. There will never be another Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose.

The late Maj. Gen. Rose, of Denver, is known for being the highest-ranking Jewish general killed in action. Former presidents and generals, such as Gen. “Lightning” Joe Collins and Dwight D. Eisenhower, credited him for ending World War II.

And yet, children at the Basisschool Maurice Rose in the Netherlands - which is where Rose is buried - know more about him than the kids at Denver Public Schools.

Denver resident Paul Shamon is doing something about that.

“I think it’s safe to say, at one time, those kids (attending the Basisschool Maurice Rose) knew more about Rose than our state legislators, rabbis and historians combined,” Shamon said. “It’s nice to see a wrong being righted.”

A few years ago, Shamon attended a book signing by Denver author Marshall Fogel who penned: “Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose, the most decorated battle tank commander in U.S. military history.”

Like Fogel, Shamon first learned of Rose after seeing his military helmet on display and a picture of him hanging in the lobby of Rose Medical Center — named in honor of the war hero — which is located at 4567 E. Ninth Ave. in Denver’s Hale neighborhood.

The helmet and picture made a great impression on Shamon, who was just a boy. And the same for Fogel, a former lawyer, who decided to write his book on Rose after he closed his law practice. The two eventually shared their great admiration for Rose and developed a strong kinship.

Peoples’ memories of Rose were fading, Shamon said.

“This man deserved to be honored and remembered for his extraordinary sacrifice,” Shamon added. “He deserved a statue.”

A statue in Rose’s honor

In 2019, during a time when statues were being torn down across the country, Fogel and Shamon started fundraising for the Rose statue. Their goal was to raise $8,000 to erect a 10-foot-tall statue of Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose, to stand proudly on the grounds of the Denver capitol.

“No taxpayer funds were spent on the statue,” Shamon said. “All fundraising, including the maintenance of the statue, will be taken care of privately, in perpetuity.”

George Lundeen of Loveland was hired to sculpt the statue.

Lundeen’s father was a pilot in WWII, but the sculptor had not known of Rose. The more he learned about him as he worked on the project, it became clear that Rose is “one of the greatest American heroes of WWII,” Lundeen said.

“It’s an honor to work on a piece like this,” Lundeen said.

After three long years, thousands of Coloradoans will finally get to see the Rose statue when it’s installed in its new home at the Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park, with the best place for viewing being at 14th Avenue and Lincoln Street. The finished product will be complete with a QR code that statue visitors can scan to learn all about the late Rose. The statue’s dedication ceremony is expected to take place late Spring.

`The Clint Eastwood of the military’ Fogel described Rose as “the Clint Eastwood of the military.”

“He was a soldier’s soldier and that’s why his men loved him,” Fogel said.

BY TAYLER SHAW TSHAW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

When two friends joined forces to donate socks to homeless shelters in January 2012, they had no idea it would lead them on a path to creating a nonpro t that has collected nearly one million pairs of socks for people in need throughout the U.S.

e Sock It To ‘Em Sock Campaign, co-founded by Sue Lee and Phillis Shimamoto, collects and distributes new pairs of socks for people experiencing homelessness and those in need, such as low-income families, Marshall Fire victims and migrants who arrived in Denver in late 2022.

Although it was more than a decade ago, Lee remembers nearly every detail of how the nonpro t originated. She was in the soup aisle at King Soopers, shopping for anksgiving dinner on a Tuesday night in 2011.

“As I was literally grabbing a can of cream of mushroom soup, written in my head were yellow block letters with a red outline, and it went like a marquee and went across my head, inside my head, and it said, ‘Sock It To ‘Em Sock Campaign, socks for the homeless.’ And it kept rotating,” Lee said.

It made her stop in her tracks.

“Literally, it was written — so it wasn’t like a thought I had conjured up,” she said. “If the message were from God, I looked up and down the aisle to make sure nobody was around, and I said, ‘Seriously? You think I have nothing else to do?’” e message kept repeating as she nished shopping. She walked to her car and, out loud, said, “OK, I’ll do it.”

“I got in the car and I called Phillis. And I said, ‘Phillis, you won’t believe what just happened. I might have gotten a divine message, I don’t know,’” Lee said.

Lee suggested they ask their friends to gather new pairs of socks through the end of December, and then take them to some homeless shelters in January.

“I was like, ‘Well, let’s do it,’” Shimamoto said.

During the rst week in January 2012, in 7-degree weather, Lee and Shimamoto took 575 pairs of socks to