Dorothy Knopper

Dorothy Knopper, a kindergarten teacher who went on to become one of Colorado's top gifted-education experts and advocates, died Wednesday night at Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville. She was 80 and had struggled for years with Alzheimer's Disease. Born in Detroit, Knopper first became interested in gifted education when suburban elementary-school teachers misdiagnosed her oldest son, Mark, as a slow learner. (He would become a computer scientist and help create the Internet.) Knopper's philosophy of education was that gifted students needed financial resources, skilled teachers and individualized attention as much as any group of special-needs children. She joined a likeminded group of parents and, in 1974, successfully lobbied the state legislature for more funding—the state soon hired a gifted-education consultant. Later, she helped create Gibson School for the Gifted, an experimental school in Dearborn, with a curriculum emphasizing independent study, field trips and art classes. Knopper, who received her bachelor's degree from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and a master's in education psychology from the University of Michigan, became a consultant for the Wayne County Intermediate School District in the early '80s. Knopper and her husband, Morton P. Knopper, a family doctor, pursued a dream in 1982 and relocated to Boulder, Colorado, where they built a home in the foothills just above Lefthand Canyon. Knopper resumed her work, at several jobs, including state consultant for gifted and talented education with the Colorado Department of Education in Denver. "My work in Colorado continues to have a strong sense of 'déjà vu' as I relive the efforts and the struggles of Michigan to bring this state to a position of leadership," she told Roeper Review in 1989. "We have already invented the wheel and can now learn from each other." After leaving CDE, she went into private practice, first counseling students individually from her small office on Iris Avenue, then organizing local conferences and putting out a journal, Understanding Our Gifted. Her independent company, Open Space Communications, published several books, including her own "Professional Development Series: Current Themes in Gifted Education," released in 1994. She continued to speak at her own conferences through 2011, the year she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, which forced her to leave her Boulder Heights home and relocate to Balfour Cherrywood Village in Louisville. Knopper, who graduated from Mumford High School in Detroit and enjoyed wearing Eddie Murphy's T-shirt from the "Beverly Hills Cop" movie, is preceded in death by her husband, who succumbed to leukemia on August 3, 2008, at age 76. She is survived by three sons, Mark, a technology entrepreneur in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Doug, a Comcast executive and chief executive officer of Freewheel.TV, in Palo Alto, California; and Steve, a Denver writer and journalist and former Daily Camera staff music reporter. She has four grandchildren, Rob, a percussionist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York City; Aurora, a student in Oakland, Michigan; Benjamin, a student in Palo Alto; and Rose, a student in Denver. A memorial service will be held in Boulder during Memorial Day weekend; more details to come via Steve Knopper's Facebook page. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Alzheimer's Association, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Floor 17, Chicago, Illinois, 60601, or www.alz.org.