In Memoriam, 1018 COBJ, Vol. 47, No. 9 Pg. 86
| Position | Vol. 47, 9 [Page 86] |
Carol Georgina Guy
August 5,1943-June30, 2018
Gina Guy, former U.S. Department of the Interior Rocky Mountain Regional Solicitor (1984-2002), passed away at her Denver home on June 30, 2018, surrounded by her family and dear companion, Terce Dines, after a five-month illness.
Gina was born and raised in Cheyenne, the only child of George and Lucille Guy. “My great-grandparents homesteaded in Wyoming in the 1880s,” Gina told LAW360 in 2010. “Wyoming is such a huge landscape and it becomes part of your everyday life. It puts you in close touch with the land and with the water.”
After graduating from the University of Wyoming, earning an MA at the University of Colorado in 1971, and teaching in Breckenridge, Gina briefly joined the Women's Army Corps. "It was unusual for someone from a small state, and I had no idea about diversity in the U.S. at that time." Gina then attended law school in Wyoming, where she was one of three women graduates in a class of 1975. Gina began her practice of law in her father's Cheyenne firm, Guy, Williams, White & Argeris, but left in 1982 to begin decades of service as a lawyer for the Interior Department.
She served for two years as regional solicitor in Portland, Oregon (1982-84) before coming to Denver as the regional solicitor in 1984. Gina described her job as "essentially that of a large-scale land manager," and she relished the opportunity to work on Western federal land and environmental issues. Gina played a key role in developing a 1982 amendment to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), providing for habitat conservation plans by private parties. In Colorado, she assisted the Fish and Wildlife Service with the listing of the Preble's lumping Mouse and the ESA § 7 consultation for the management of the Rocky Flats site as a National Wildlife Refuge. Gina also managed the CERCL A clean-up for the Rocky Mountain Arsenal as it too transitioned from military uses to a National Wildlife Refuge. Interior Secretary Gale Norton asked Gina to act personally on her behalf to resolve complex Middle Rio Grande water and Silvery Minnow ESA issues, which resulted in a successful settlement in 2001. As a manager, she served as a mentor to all the lawyers in the Solicitor's Office, but was particularly supportive to the young women trying to balance career and home. In 2002, Gina took a position in the Pentagon with the Air Force as deputy...
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