When Colorado lost Leonard Perlmutter on July 8, it lost someone who had been one of the most versatile jack-of-all-trades in the recent history of the state’s business community.

Perlmutter had operated his own construction companies, served as former Gov. Roy Romer’s first executive director of the Colorado Office of EconomicDevelopment and International Trade and helmed National Jewish Health as president and CEO. He also was the father to U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter when he died at the age of 92.

Leonard Perlmutter’s career was most notable for the depth and breadth of legacy projects on which he played a key part. Gail Klapper — the president of the Colorado Forum, a business organization with which Perlmutter was involved for 40 years — noted that he was a leader in the development of the Animas-La Plata Water Project, the push to clean up the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons facility and the Denver Preschool Program.

The water project, which Klapper argues is the last major water project to be developed in the United States, exemplified Perlmutter’s career, she said. He advocated for its construction to U.S. Department of Energy even when its future seemed questionable, worked with everyone from the federal government to the Ute tribes to see it through and kept people talking even at states of potential impasse because he realized the pipeline and reservoir was critical to the futures of Colorado and New Mexico.

“He was very small in stature, but in many ways he was a giant,” Klapper said. “He would listen to everybody, he would be very respectful, but then at the end of the conversation he would come back and say ‘Here is where we need to go.’”

Those skills helped him in running his own companies, but they also explained why so many organizations sought Perlmutter out to serve on their board. He was chairman of the Board of Colorado Open Lands was a key contributor to the Colorado Forum and was a lifetime director on the National Jewish Health board since 1978.

Despite coming from a non-medical background, Perlmutter rose up the ranks at National Jewish, starting as a board member shortly after the nationally lauded respiratory hospital merged in 1972 with the National Asthma Center, on whose board he sat. He served as chairman from 1983-86, became president and CEO from 1991-93 and received the National Jewish Health Arthur B. Lorber Award for Distinguished Service upon his retirement.

U.S. Rep. Perlmutter said upon the passing of his father, a Denver native and University of Colorado-Boulder graduate, the scope of his accomplishments was “immeasurable.”

“There was not job and no person too big or too small for him,” the 6th-term Democratic congressman from Denver’s western suburbs said. “He was an innovator, business man, educator, civic leader, dog lover, Democrat from the top of his head to the tips of his toes and a wonderful father, husband, grandfather and great-grandfather.”

Klapper said he set the tone for many around him on what a leader should be.

“He was such a good listener and such a wise individual,” she said. “He was a citizen. If we could find more people like him, we will be so much richer as a community.”