The couple raised their two boys and one girl in a home on Santa Fe Drive

After a bout with polio that nearly killed him, Douglas H. Buck emerged stronger than ever and with a wish for health for everyone.

“For the rest of his life, he was always very physically active,” said his widow, Mims Buck.

Now his name graces the Buck Recreation Center, which is this year’s Western Welcome Week grand marshal. Staff will ride in the parade, which is themed “Fit and Fun.”

Western Welcome Week begins Aug. 8 and runs through Aug. 19.

In the ’70s, Mr. Buck owned a building on Littleton Boulevard and Spotswood Street that he donated to South Suburban Parks and Recreation District for a clinic and community center. After his death, his family donated the proceeds from the sale of those buildings plus $1 million to kick start construction of the center.

“He believed in democracy,” said Mrs. Buck. “He didn’t like country clubs and exclusive things. He liked it so everybody could go. … It just seemed to us to be a continuation of the first gift and an expansion into his belief that people needed those kinds of activities.”

Mrs. Buck died July 12 at the age of 102, just weeks before the parade that will honor her family name. The Littleton Independent was fortunate to sit down with her and her son David in April, and she shared memories of her husband and their 50-year life in Littleton.

The couple met at the University of Colorado, where he studied business and she studied psychology.

“He seemed very solid,” said Mrs. Buck.

They were married in November 1929, and Mr. Buck started work at an investment firm. He was good at it, but his timing was bad – the Great Depression found him working at his father-in-law’s mortuary. He brought the business of burial insurance to the company, and later bought the whole business.

He ran the mortuary until 1965, when he sold it to oil company Tenneco and went back to investing at a very lucrative time in Denver.

The couple raised their two boys and one girl in a home on Santa Fe Drive, where Denver Seminary is now. When they arrived, Littleton was mostly industrial and rural, with a population of only around 3,000.

“It was very diverse,” she said. “There were some really well-off kids from Bow Mar, and a whole bunch of other kids who … well, not everybody washed the barnyard off their shoes before they came in the house.”

Three weeks before his daughter was born in 1943, Mr. Buck was in the hospital, his arms stricken with polio – a dreaded disease at the time that affects nerves and can lead to paralysis.

“He was very upset and scared for the children,” recalled Mrs. Buck.

After an arduous recovery that took about four years, Mr. Buck was back in the saddle. David Buck remembers him taking the kids swimming on a regular basis, working in the garden and walking often.

Mrs. Buck said her husband had a wonderful sense of humor, though he might have come across as serious to those who didn’t know him well.

“He might have seemed hard on the outside, but he was really very kind,” she said.

“He had a very agreeable nature,” agreed David Buck. “And he was extremely philanthropic. He didn’t think that we should gather all our wealth together, so he established our charity in 1986.”

He said his mother, too, was always supportive of her children’s endeavors, from horseback riding to art, football to wrestling.

“She always took an enormous amount of interest in what her children did and made sure we did it right,” recalled David.

As a result of the family’s passions, thousands of children have access to affordable fitness, seniors have a place to socialize and the community has a place to gather to learn, meet and mingle.

“I consider myself a very fortunate person,” said Mrs. Buck.