Upon graduation from Yale, Dick decided to follow Horace Greeley’s famous advice: “Go West young man.” He went into the oil business, initially as a roughneck for a drilling company in Midland, TX, and later as a landman for an independent oil company. In 1952, he moved to Denver with a small independent oil company, and subsequently founded an exploration company, Whittaker, Bigelow and Company. Later he was a founding partner of a securities company, Mountain States Securities. As time progressed, he formed a venture capital firm, Bigelow Investment Company, which raised money, principally in the east for deals in the west, in such areas as oil exploration, commercial and residential real estate and securities trading.

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Dick was a member of the Denver Country Club, the University Club, the Denver Athletic Club, the Garden of the Gods Club and the Vallejo Gun Club. He was president of Club Limited, a nationwide hunting and fishing organization, and a member of the Roundup Riders of the Rockies, the Arapahoe Hunt Club and the Plum Creek Polo Club. He was also a member of several New York clubs, including the Knickerbocker Greys, The Brook, the Racquet and Tennis, Piping Rock and New York Yacht clubs. Throughout his life, Dick enjoyed playing polo, golf, tennis, squash, and skiing, as well as upland game and waterfowl shooting and freshwater and deep-sea fly-fishing.

 

Dick’s infectious laugh and the sparkle in his eye will be remembered by all his dear friends. Survived by the joy of his life, his daughter, Miss Bettina A. Bigelow (Venti—Bettina A. Bigelow) of Steamboat Springs, CO, he was preceded in death by Bettina’s mother, Mrs. Joan Turnburke Bigelow (Joan Evelyn Turnburke).