The heart of Sterling James Greenwood, age 70, gave out Saturday morning, April 27, at his home in Aspen. He liked to say he published his newspaper, the Aspen Free Press, in his LeMans convertible in the third space from the corner at Main and Monarch. Given his eccentricities, and, given that the year was 1982 in Aspen, it was likely true.

At daybreak on any given day, on his impossibly long legs, he could be seen racing through town... delivering his single yellow sheet to lodges and cafes, handing them through car windows, tossing stacks of them at Carl's, dropping a dozen at bakeries; running upstairs to offices, downstairs to shops, blanketing the whole town until nighttime, when he could be seen again scattering his stories through the downtown bars and clubs.

As a one-man reporter who ran a one-man newspaper, he sold the ads, pasted up the final product, and wrote the stories. He quoted from Raymond Chandler's detective mysteries, from 1940's sci-fi paperbacks, from 1950's movies (he had seen them all), and from Hemingway, whose famous line he paraphrased to describe Aspen in the 80's:

"The real world was always out there, but nobody went there anymore."

His stories were about us --- common folk --- our petty crimes, our romantic stupidities, and the follies of being young in a town that condoned just about everything.

It's no surprise that so many of us, including his friend and collaborator, "peoples lawyer" John Van Ness, collected Sterling's papers, and still own them.

In 1982, when dishwasher Glen McGehee went missing and later thawed out and surfaced in the river down by No Problem Bridge, the authorities cried Accident, but Sterling claimed it was Murder and persisted and persisted and finally named names. Months later two men were sent up for the murder and drug deal that had gone terribly wrong for Glen McGehee --- and forever endeared Sterling and his yellow sheet to Aspen working stiffs.

With words alone (no committee meetings, no marches, or riots) he convinced City Council to remove the de-icer mag chloride from Aspen streets. "Bottom line," he explained, "dogs get cancer from it."

When Phil Sullivan, a 75-year-old man living in a house trailer in Woody Creek (aka "the free taxi driver") was prosecuted by the State of Colorado, Sterling wrote, "We can thank our lucky stars that the state managed to cobble together enough money to send all those lawyers and detectives up to Aspen in an effort to keep Phil Sullivan from giving people free rides in his car."

Aunt Odessa and Uncle Clarence Rainwater, Sterling's adoptive parents, shaped his populist ideas. They were cotton farmers and ginners, cattle ranchers, oil prospectors, and Democrats in Vernon which sat in the "Last Picture Show" area of West Texas on the Red River which separates Texas from Oklahoma.

Sterling's father was away most of the time paving streets in small towns; his mother Lois (Aunt Odessa's sister) lived in Vernon and taught piano there. But Sterling lived with, and was raised by, his aunt and uncle.

As a young man, Sterling ("Jim", as he was known to Vernon) planted and plowed cotton and wheat on his own river land, rounded up cattle on horseback, searched for oil, and helped out in his Uncle Clarence's gin until the cotton dust sent him looking for a place where he could breathe.

When he was a teen, his aunt and uncle consigned Sterling to military school in Kerrville, Texas; later, to a Presbyterian college, Rhodes College, in Memphis.

In 1968, while still living in Memphis, he was working as a cub reporter on the night desk at The Commercial Appeal when Martin Luther King was assassinated at a Memphis motel. Along with future Denver Post columnist, Woody Paige, Sterling was sent into the hoods to report on the rioting and mayhem that ensued. He was 25 years old.

In 1979, at age 36, after working as a cotton dealer, then as a stringer for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. When Danforth wanted to enlarge his paper from a one-sheet, Sterling created the Aspen Free Press, and billed it as "Aspen's Worst Newspaper".

In 2003, with his fourth wife, Karen, who had grown up in Midland a few miles from Vernon, and whom he had met decades earlier at the Pour la France bistro lunch counter (now Asie, next to The Cantina), he revived the Aspen Free Press, enlarged its format and, for the first time, began accepting real estate ads.

He moved a printing press into the living room of their condo that perched on a balcony in the alley behind McDonald's At this juncture, he reported more and more about women and men who had seriously "had it" with each other, stories that involved bullets and an occasional suspected bomb, while writing (he said) in his bathrobe at a table in McDonald's.

On a cold snowy Sunday, February 20, 2005, Sterling had already published and delivered that day's issue when he learned that writer Hunter Thompson had killed himself in his kitchen at Woody Creek outside Aspen. One hour later, Sterling hit the street with Hunter's story, a full half-day ahead of the other two Aspen papers, both of which were printed down valley.

Recently, with a handful of $50 ads, his one-sheet paper, hand-delivered to Aspen's downtown core, produced the buyer for a $1.1 million condo near the gondola base.

As a free-lance journalist, he, with his wife, photographed and wrote political stories for the Huffington Post and recently contributed research and photos to "Barack Obama, the Story," a biography by Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Maraniss of The Washington Post. Sterling had attended Hawkins School in Vernon with Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

He married four times. He is survived by his current wife, Karen Day of Aspen, and three previous wives: Llewellyn, Sally, and Elizabeth. He fathered four children: Alice born in Aspen; Katherine, Hardage, and Clarence (also known as singer/songwriter Citizen Cope). He has seven grandchildren.

Hospice of the Valley lovingly relieved his pain and eased his exit; 970-279-5509 to donate.

He was 70 years old, battled prostate cancer for 17 years, and asked that the last Aspen Free Press represent his obituary and his memorial service. More of his stories may be seen at www.aspenfreepress.com, a website he designed.

At the very end, in a state of semi-delirium, he mumbled that he was "on a wagon train bound for Juarez."

We'll miss you Sterling Jim.