Karen Seckler

I just found out that our friend Karen Seckler died in June of 2022 and I didn't even know. Learning that sad news has brought back memories of our time with her and how she touched our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob met Karen through his association with Fort Collins home builder Carl Nelson. Together the three of them designed and built Karen and husband David a new home in Terry Shores in the early 1970s. 

 

 

 

I first met Karen and David at the open house when the home was finished. It was a beautiful two-story with an impressive fireplace that dominated one wall rising the full height of the house, a detached and matching building for Karen's art studio, and a view of Terry Lake through pines. 

 

The guests at the open house included all the tradesmen who worked on the house and their spouses. Someone tripped and we heard glass shattering on tile floor, then David's lighthearted comment that put everyone at ease, "Now that's what makes a home a house!" I knew then I liked that man.

Bob was in touch with Karen occasionally over the next fifteen years as she and her family of four moved where David's work would take them, even living in India for a few years. I learned from her obituary that Karen was born in India where her parents were Lutheran missionaries. David was an economics professor, very much involved in water resource management in foreign countries. 

I don't remember how it came to be that Karen and their daughters, Adrienne and Veronica, with their young cousin Courtney, spent a weekend with us in 1988. Our niece Rachel was visiting from Illinois and it may be Karen was in Greeley visiting family, talked with Bob on the phone, and a plan came together for the girls to meet one another and hang out. What I do remember is that we had a fun time together and packed a lot of activities into that weekend.

 

Karen's family had a cabin in the Rockies which the whole family shared at times and constructed together. Rachel and I were invited to join in and add our piece of the wall to the cabin!

 

 

 

 

 

We visited an amusement park with its rides, snacks, face painting, and people-watching.

 

 

 

 

 

At our home we sat around and read books, did some knitting and other crafts, and talked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out in the yard Bob brought Sid the horse close to the house where everyone could brush, feed, water, and lead him. 

He was a young stallion, not ready to ride, but gentle enough for handling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that visit Adrienne and Rachel were penpals for awhile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then in 2000 I got a phone call from Karen with terrible news. Their lovely young daughter, Adrienne, had died of brain cancer at the age of 26. That was so unbelievable. She was so vibrant, so healthy, with high hopes for her future. I wish that I had been the good listener Karen needed, put my own grief aside and let her lean on me. Instead I told her of how Rachel had lost her mother, my sister Kathy, to suicide just a few years before Karen lost Adrienne. And how Bob's dad had just died after surviving a serious farm accident, a tractor fire.

Karen Seckler was kind and easy going all the while being smart, independent and artistic. She designed several complex and beautiful homes down to the small details like the placement of each electrical outlet, then worked with the builders from start to completion. 

Her presence in my life was as if an exquisite butterfly lit nearby, stayed long enough for me to appreciate her strength and beauty, then flew up, away and out of sight without disturbing the air around us. I am a better person for having known Karen Seckler. She left David, Veronica, grandchildren and siblings to carry on her legacy, and I know she left many friends and admirers like me and Bob to mourn her passing.

 

Dreams

When RD and I first started planning a life together we had dreams, big dreams. At the time we were in our twenties, worked at the same lumber supply and home manufacturing company, and I had a two-year-old son. We had no money. I was making $1.90 per hour and RD $650 per month. We both were getting divorces and paying off the bills we had incurred in our first marriages, but we didn't let that dampen our dreams.

 

 

 

 

In the spring of 1971 RD's thoughts were still very much caught up in the Vietnam War and his recent stint with the U.S. Navy's Underwater Demolition Team 11. Although not a corpsman, his experiences treating trauma victims, teammates needing penicillin, and even a pregnant Vietnamese woman inspired him to seek a career in medicine. He talked with our family doctor, Maynard "Mike" DeYoung about the path to Physician's Assistant, with his goal to work on an Indian Reservation in the West. That PA path was long, expensive, and ultimately abandoned as not practical, not do-able. But the dream was important, fueling his and my imaginations for many months as we planned our futures together.

That same year, 1971, RD's father, Doyle Russell, helped us find a place out in the country, a small acreage with an old house, dairy barn, granary, silo, and chicken house. We fell in love with the place and pursued our dream of building our own home and living a rural life where we could raise our son and a few chickens too. 

 

 

 

 

That dream came true! With much hard work, bartering with tradesmen and finding bargains on building materials, we moved into our dome home in 1978.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was another dream we shared, inspired by a magazine article we read about an artists' retreat. As I recall it featured a rural property with a main house surrounded by small cottages, each easily accessible by walkways but cleverly landscaped to give each cottage a feel of isolation and privacy. Artists of many persuasion, musicians, writers, painters, and poets, were welcome to stay in the cabins and create their works without interruption. Their meals were delivered in baskets and left on doorsteps like room service at a hotel. RD and I liked to imagine building those cabins on our place, and all the meals he would cook and deliver, for cooking was one of his own expressions of creativity and love. And I liked to dream of landscaping and growing flowers with strong scents that would drift in through the open windows. 

Although we didn't build those cottages nor host those artists I believe our dreams and intentions were at play when we opened our home to our musician friends Charlie and Moose, Starla, Steve, Dave, and more, fed them big meals, and made lots of music!

 

 

 

And there was a retirement dream, early in our relationship, and it, too, was inspired by something we read. In 1976 James Michener published his book "Centennial" which we both dearly loved. And we read the companion book "In Search of Centennial" A Journey With James A. Michener by John Kings which told of Michener's time in Weld County, Colorado, the area where RD was born and lived the first eleven years of his life. 

 

 

 

 

 

We also read a terrific article in Colorado Heritage, The Journal of the Colorado Historical Society, 1982 Issue 1, where we learned that James Michener as a young man had come to Greeley, Colorado in 1936 to teach history at Colorado State College of Education, now University of Northern Colorado. While there he spent three years, dusty days of the Depression, traveling the plains, meeting the people, learning the problems of this semi-arid land. 

When James Michener finished his book "Centennial" he dedicated it to three men:

Floyd Merrill of Greeley, who showed me the rivers; Otto Unfug of Sterling, who taught me about cattle;Clyde Stanley of Keota, who introduced me to the prairies.

A favorite story is the first time he met Clyde Stanley in December of 1972, "On a trip to the ghost town of Keota, abandoned but for the still-functioning post office, Michener opened the door and a wispy old man stepped forward to greet us, unusually bright of eye and witty of speech. He told us that the rest of the town had pretty well blown away, but there he was, ready to sell us stamps if we needed any."

I could go on and on about Clyde Stanley, his sister Faye, their developing friendship with James Michener, even appearing in the story of Centennial as the character Walter Bellamy, but this is about our dream of retiring to Weld County, specifically to the town of Grover.  You see, we made that drive to Keota, read all we could find about the town in its heyday, the abandoned railroad there, and the cause of its demise. But Keota is and was a ghost town. Nearby Grover, only fourteen miles away as the crow flies across the Pawnee National Grassland, had, in the 1970s, a grocery store, a gas station, and even a cafe. What more could retirees want? Ha! 

As retirees, now in our late 70s and early 80s, I can tell you that we want nearby doctors, grocery stores, and Krispie Kremes! Grover no longer appeals to us, but that dream of retiring there kept us going during years of working 9 to 5 at jobs we didn't like. And another thing about that retiring-to-Grover dream I have realized is that although I was drawn to Colorado for her majestic Rocky Mountains, thanks to RD's love of the high, dry plains of Eastern Colorado and James Michener's book Centennial, I too, am a fan of Eastern Colorado, its flat plains, the antelope, the sand lilies, and the wind, yes, even the wind.

As for dreams, we still have them. While our friends are downsizing, moving to places where lawn mowing doesn't dominate their summers, giving away their collections, being practical about their lifestyles, RD and I are still surrounded by all the things we love, like cats and books, and leaves and trees. But that's who we are, dreamers. And I thank God for that and for our shared interests and experiences, and for this year's dreams we dare to share only with one another.