Lynn Bartels, intrepid journalist, columnist, features writer, and award-winning investigative reporter, died on June 19, 2026, succumbing to aggressive brain cancer, Glioblastoma. She was diagnosed in April 2026 and died 10 weeks later. She was 69 years old.

Lynn was born on May 14, 1957, in Vermillion, South Dakota, to Fritz and Mary Bartels. She was the third-born in a family of nine kids raised in the rural area near Meckling. Lynn developed a devilish sense of humor and a way with words at an early age, as a survival skill among so many siblings and in a family with firm rules, which Lynn once spelled out in a column: "Eat what's on your plate. No sassing. Only two teaspoons of sugar in your breakfast cereal. Finish your homework. Don't lead trump unless you have the face card."

Lynn also relied on being very cute, a strategy the judges of a local Cutest Baby contest recognized, earning her her very first award. Over the span of her life, she would receive many more prestigious honors, but she never forgot the first.

Her birthday meant she was a Taurus, which for Lynn was a source of deep satisfaction. Her hallmark reliability, loyalty, talent for making friends, and stubborn resistance to change are traits her family, colleagues, and legions of friends easily recognize. Our May baby would have been PO'ed to have been born under any other sign.

Lynn's high school and college years spanned the 1970s, which, according to Lynn, was "the greatest decade known to man." She fully embraced the music, the decoupage, daisies, making beer tab curtains, and the art of personalizing blue jean jackets. She graduated from Vermillion High School in 1975, having served as the editor of The Vermillionaire. For a side gig, she created "The News at Noon Thirty," a lampoon-style daily rundown and commentary on breaking events held each day in the newspaper room, drawing a crowd brought to tears with laughter. One classmate said "The News at Noon Thirty" is the only reason he didn't drop out of school.

She went on to attend Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri, a place that truly changed her life. At Cottey, Lynn honed her skills of making lifelong friends, being riotously funny, scaring the hell out of people, making some heads shake a little, up to and including the dean, and singing songs. That she couldn't carry a tune never mattered. "I can't sing!" she'd say, undeterred. To this day, many of her dearest friends are her Cottey pals, some of whom serenaded her with Cottey songs while she lay in bed in her final weeks.

Lynn graduated from Northern Arizona University, where she rushed Alpha Omicron Pi and served as editor of The Lumberjack. She loved her years in Flagstaff, which resembled the Arizona sequel of "Animal House." (A Peter Pan outfit, Halloween, a cop, maybe an arrest…) The friends she made at NAU morphed into the tight-knit "Have Plastic, Will Travel" gang. They and their families remained a central and deeply meaningful part of her life.

Her professional career began in 1980 at The Gallup Independent in New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment took hold of Lynn, and she returned the favor by perfecting the world's best recipe for "White Girl Enchiladas" – South Dakota comfort meets Hatch green chile. (Surprisingly, the recipe says to go easy on the cheese.)

She soon moved to Albuquerque to write for The Albuquerque Tribune, where she worked on bigger stories, won awards, wrote a three-days-a-week column, became addicted to Diet Pepsi, and solidified her reputation for having the greatest Rolodex in the newsroom.

Lynn moved to Denver in 1993, beginning a legendary run in Colorado at her beloved Rocky Mountain News. She worked at the Rocky until the paper shut down in 2009, a heartbreak she never got over. The Denver Post immediately hired her, where she continued to hustle and broke stories until 2015, before leaving daily journalism to serve as the communications director for then-Secretary of State Wayne Williams. While the public knew her through her brilliant professional endeavors, Lynn's best audience was always closer to home.

For the Bartels family, Lynn was our official scribe. We counted on her for postcards dashed off in thick Sharpie, for notes that captured a whole complicated family tale in just a few remarkably funny sentences, birthday cards she had saved for just the right recipient, columns about our lives, and for the family book she put together for Fritz and Mary's 40th anniversary. She was our go-to for eulogies and obituaries, where she masterfully wrapped the facts with sentimental nuggets and her off-the-wall humor—the exact ingredients she believed made a life consequential. Lynn chronicled the wonderful, wild, and weird Bartels family experience with fierce love and no filter.

She also knew when to lighten up the seriousness with a perfect one-liner. In a discussion a while back about everyone's desires for their own funerals, she offered this: "I want my ashes sprinkled in a greased 9x13 pan."

One of Lynn's favorite things in a newspaper was the obituary section. She appreciated a well-written obit, and she understood the craft behind boiling down a magnificent life into a tight story. Without her guidance and choice remarks, it is difficult to do the same for her now. Her life is a wonderful story. She would so enjoy everyone telling their own part of it.

Lynn is survived by siblings Joe Bartels (Jodene) of Sioux Falls, SD; Mary Kay Zimmerman of Vermillion; Jeanne Rayburn (Jim) of Albuquerque; Jerry Bartels (Julia Kleinschmit) of Vermillion; Susan Welz (Bruce) of Minocqua, WI; Brigid Bungum (Brian) of Denver; Caroline Leigh Harvey Bartels of New York, NY; and Kitty Bartels Di Martino (David) of Kensington, MD. Her love of family extends to surviving nieces, nephews, and their children as well as to Uncle Ken Bartels of Scottsdale, AZ and Aunt Bernadette Castor of Portola Valley, CA, their families, and loads of cousins from both her mom's and dad's families. She is preceded in death by John Frederick "Fritz" Bartels, Mary Lorraine (Fritz) Bartels, Deb (Buckmier) Bartels, and Dennis Zimmerman.

A memorial service to celebrate Lynn's magnificent life will be held on Monday, July 13 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, by RSVP. A Funeral Mass for family and friends will be held the following day, Tuesday, July 14, at 10:00 AM at Holy Family Parish, 4380 Utica Street, Denver, CO 80212 .

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be directed to:

Cottey College

Northern Arizona University (Jan Stevens Journalism Scholarship, Fund 1367)

The Denver Press Club