A blanket of snow covered Easter Seals Rocky Mountain Village in Empire as cars filled the parking lots and lined the sides of gravel roads leading to a wooden lodge where more than 100 friends and locals gathered to celebrate the life of Greg Markle.
For many longtime residents of Clear Creek County, KYGT radio pioneer Markle is considered legendary for his resonating commitments and achievements in a county they say he loved.
“He lived a life of adventure and we benefited,” his lifelong friend Rick Lewis said at the celebration Nov. 16.
Markle moved to Clear Creek County from Pennsylvania in the early ‘70s, starting out his life in Colorado with meager means, according to Lewis.
“He came here as a hippie living in abandoned mining cabins up on ‘Oh-my-God-Road,’ exclaiming, ‘You can live on a dollar a day,’” Lewis said.
In the years that followed, Markle would do much more, including creating KYGT (The Goat) radio station, becoming a land surveyor for the Federal Bureau of Land Management and Clear Creek/Gilpin counties for more than 30 years, producing and directing several local full-length films and never missing an opportunity to make people laugh.
“If someone was feeling down or there was tension, he would make a joke and sometimes it would fall flat, and other times it would be just what everybody needed to break the moment and move on,” his long-time wife Amber Dahlin said.
There were very few tears during the celebration — the tears were expressed in laughter from the crowd of people who transcended generations, social/political ideals and status.
Markle had that effect on people and the celebration was just a reflection of how he lived his life, according to Dahlin.
“It’s wonderful, it’s marvelous. It would have made him so happy because that was so important to him to be part of the community and have people get together and do something fun,” Dahlin said. “So, to have all these friends and acquaintances from so many years, in a way it’s kind of overwhelming.”
In 1994 Markle had an idea for a local radio station that could provide music, local news and perspectives from business and government leaders, according to Lewis.
He applied for and was eventually granted a license from the Federal Communications Commission to broadcast.
KYGT or “The Goat,” as locals know it, has been broadcasting music, local sporting events, interview shows and community news ever since.
“He was a creative thought, he got an object in his mind and he would make it happen… he was very good at bending people’s minds to his line of thought,” Lewis said.
KYGT volunteer and reporter/disc jockey since 1998 Mark Cucinella just smiled and laughed when asked his thoughts about Markle, saying his dream of a local radio station for and about local residents is still live and on the air.
“It’s the gift that’s going to keep on giving to Clear Creek County,” Cucinella said.
Markle was a Philadelphia transplant to Clear Creek but maintained close ties to childhood friends from the city. Lewis said he’s proud to be one of a group of friends coined “The Seven Idiots from Philadelphia.”
Their exploits, some of which probably shouldn’t be mentioned for legal purposes, Lewis laughed, include camping, hiking and fishing in the Grand Canyon, until they met the National Park Ranger and the occasional trip hopping a freight train to anywhere.
However, once he grounded himself in Clear Creek County, Lewis and friends said Markle was home and he loved the residents in it.
“He joked a lot but he was very serious about his passion for the uniqueness of this county, this area in general, and how the people who come here are unusual in so many ways and he liked that, different backgrounds and unusual stories,” Dahlin said.
Photographs, dated copies of the Clear Creek Courant with headlines featuring Markle and promotional posters for The Goat lined tables at the back of the lodge where friends gathered, shared stories, laughed and embraced.
As he was in life, Markle continued in his death the role of “Grand Master of the Kazoo Band,” Lewis said.
Well over 100 kazoos were placed under each seat in the lodge and Grandmaster Lewis issued marching orders to kazoo “Roll Out the Barrel” as the song started playing on the speakers.
Once in tune, The group filed into a single line and marched outside playing loudly, giving high-fives and laughing, all under a bluebird sky and the bright sunshine of an afternoon in Clear Creek County.
“His final request; ‘I want a Kazoo Band so everybody walks out of here with a goddamn smile,’ — that was Greg,” Lewis said.