Loretta Harmon: A true Nuggets original

As was her custom at McNichols Sports Arena, Harmon knitted blankets for the newborns who were about to join the Denver Nuggets family.

Players, coaches, executives, co-workers. If Loretta knew someone was expecting, a blanket certainly wasn’t far behind.

“Loretta’s not just one of the best – she’s the all-time best-est,” said Fat Lever, who played for the Nuggets from 1984-90. “She’s the original mother hen.

“The special things that she did you take for granted because you’re busy playing basketball. When you have someone taking care of your family like that, you’re at ease. She put my family at ease. You can’t ask for better.”

On Nov. 16, Harmon will celebrate her 37th anniversary with the Nuggets. At 79, she works part-time in the accounting department and often carpools to work with her daughter Ann Harmon, a director of ticket operations for the Nuggets and the Pepsi Center.

“Everything I know, I’ve learned here,” Loretta Harmon said. “I’d become a couch potato if I stayed home.”

A New Career

Harmon joined the Nuggets almost by accident on Nov. 16, 1974 – a date she recalls as though it were last week.

As season-ticketholders for the Denver Rockets, she and her now-former husband were at the Auditorium Arena box office for a booster-club contest when the ticket manager asked Loretta what she did for a living. She was working in a men’s tailor shop and was open to new possibilities.

“He wanted to know if I’d be interested in going to work for the Nuggets in the ticket office,” Harmon recalled. “I, of course, said, Yes!’ ”

Harmon worked in the ticket office for four years, making the move from Auditorium Arena to McNichols when the Nuggets joined the NBA in 1976. She then spent a year as the receptionist for assistant general manager Bob King before moving into the team’s accounting office.

“We had no computers. We did everything manually,” Harmon recalls. “We had these huge ledgers and we had to balance them out. There were a lot of erasers.”

Queen of the Room

Harmon later landed in the payroll department, but her most fulfilling role with the Nuggets didn’t take place during regular business hours.

When Carl Scheer took over as Nuggets president and general manager in 1976, he required every staff member to work game nights. Harmon was asked to assist the players’ and coaches’ wives and girlfriends. Needless to say, she embraced the assignment wholeheartedly.

“She was the queen of that wives room,” said Nuggets executive director of basketball administration Lisa Johnson, who joined the team as a ticket representative in 1981.

The room had few frills in its early days. Harmon managed to secure a popcorn machine and later received approval to have the in-house catering company provide drinks, snacks and meals.

“She was very caring,” said Jane Moe, wife of former Nuggets coach Doug Moe. “All the wives really liked Loretta because of how special she was and how special she made them feel.”

Harmon would be waiting at the door when the first spouse or girlfriend arrived at each home game and she was there to lock up after the families left the building. For those who weren’t a family member or guest, nothing short of a royal decree would permit entrance to the room.

When the Nuggets were scoring 120 points a night under Moe in the 1980s, a national sports celebrity and budding Hall of Fame quarterback failed to get past the bouncer affectionately known as Lo-Har.

“John Elway tried to come in one time,” Harmon said. “He had a whole entourage of people. I said, ‘Who are you a guest of?’ I wouldn’t let him in.”

(Editor’s note: Elway remains a big Nuggets fan, and the Broncos enjoyed the anecdote about their executive vice president of football operations.)

When it came to the wives room, Harmon adopted the watchdog mentality out of love and respect for the women she considered her adopted daughters.

“They were my people,” she said. “They were my family. They were my girls. They’re still my girls.”

Nurturing By Nature

Nurturing is second nature to Harmon, who has five children, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

She developed a sincere bond with the players, coaches and their families. The feelings were reciprocated across the board.

“She’s the original original,” Doug Moe said. “She’s just terrific. Good to be around and enjoyable to be around all the time. She fit in with everybody. The whole atmosphere was very friendly.”

In the business of pro sports, emotional attachments often result in heartbreaking good-byes.

Harmon said Lever took a piece of her heart when he was traded from Denver to the Dallas Mavericks on June 21, 1990. She fondly remembers watching Garrett Lever in her accounting office when the family needed a baby-sitter in a pinch.

Lever, who is now the director of player development for the Sacramento Kings, later sent Harmon a picture of his three grown children posing with the blankets that she crocheted for them years earlier.

“Loretta always went above and beyond her job description to ensure that every family member felt like a VIP of the organization,” said Lever’s ex-wife Charlene. “She has a genuine heart and concern.”

By The Book

Outside the office, Harmon showed the same spirit and passion while keeping the scorebook for the company softball team in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

As a lifelong baseball fan who grew up rooting for the New York Yankees, Harmon knew her stuff. Yet her rulings on hits and errors were often challenged when the players returned to the dugout.

“She was a tough scorekeeper,” said Mark Waggoner, senior vice president of sports finance for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. “Loretta would never give an inch. … She kept everything organized. We enjoyed having her out there. We felt like she was part of the team.”

Harmon smiles at the memory of those good-natured dugout disputes.

“No one won arguments with Loretta,” she deadpanned. “I can be nasty.”

Lisa Whittaker, the manager of premium sales and service in the KSE ticket office, was the catcher for many of those co-ed softball teams. She can still hear Harmon’s voice saying, “Whitty, you’re up next.”

“We loved it,” Whittaker said. “She was always sweet and always happy.”

Acts of Kindness

And always caring.

Johnson, formerly Lisa Sloan, remembers the support and kindness Harmon provided after her mother died. Johnson was an only child whose father also had passed away, leaving the Nuggets as her closest family.

“She is one of the most caring and giving people I’ve met,” Johnson said. “I’ve always considered her kind of a mom. I’ve always been able to talk to her. She knows when you need a little lift.”

In the weeks after her mother’s death, Johnson had financial obligations that were difficult to meet. She would occasionally arrive at work on Monday to find King Soopers gift cards on her desk.

“They’d magically appear,” Johnson said. “They never said who they were from, but I always knew.”

Harmon also used the scraps from the various blankets she had made over the years to crochet a blanket for Johnson’s cat. The Nuggets staff eventually got too big to keep up with every newborn, so Harmon reserves her crocheting for immediate family.

The memories, however, are never far away as she rides to work with Ann and has lunch periodically with Johnson and other longtime co-workers.

PHOTO GALLERY

Ann Harmon encourages Loretta to work as long as she still enjoys it. The part-time salary helps subsidize Loretta’s manicures, trips to the salon and season tickets to the Buell Theater.

The Buell fittingly sits on the site of the Auditorium Arena, where Harmon began knitting blankets for co-workers nearly four decades earlier.

Auditorium Arena eventually gave way to McNichols Arena, which eventually gave way to the Pepsi Center. Regardless of the venue, Harmon has remained a constant in the Nuggets organization.

She has touch hundreds of lives and produced countless memories that have been woven together to form her own unique tapestry of service and dedication.