Marcia Jane McGilvray

After 102 fulfilling years, Jane put away her uniquely creative imagination for the last time on Sunday, June 28. She will be interred at Fort Logan National Cemetery with her husband of nearly fifty years, Bill. She will be greatly missed by sons Bruce (Sandie), of Lakewood, Colorado, and Alan (Susan) of Centennial, Colorado, six grandchildren and five great grandchildren. She passed away quietly in the assisted living facility where she had lived for the previous two and a half years. Her well-loved grandchildren are William Clinton McGilvray (Kim) of Verona, Wisconsin, Scott Alexander McGilvray (Micky) of Fulda, Germany, Jason Andrew McGilvray of Brawley, California, Heather Elizabeth Barnsen (Jamie) of Manly, NSW, Australia (children of Bruce and Sandie), Kirk Cameron McGilvray (Ashley) of Longmont, Colorado, and Kyle Michael McGilvray (Estela) of Denver, Colorado, (children of Alan and Susan). Her great grandchildren are Kade, Makenna, and Kieran (children of Clint), and Finn and Zoe (children of Scott). Jane was born at home on South Sherman Street in Denver, the second of five children of Stephen James Knight and Louise Carruth Knight, both from pioneer Denver families. Her older sister Ruth (Vos), her younger sister Eleanor (Colwell), her younger brother Stephen J. Knight Jr., and her youngest brother Richard T. Knight have all previously passed away. Ruby, Nornie, Jane, Steve, and Dick were fortunate to grow up as a close family, and more fortunate to remain close, as they all lived in Denver all their lives, getting together at Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. Those gatherings nearly always included her ten nieces and nephews as well as many relatives from the extended Knight family. After attending East High School in Denver, Jane journeyed west to attend a new women's college there, Scripps College in Claremont, California, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in chemistry. That was one of Jane's first unusual achievements, since Scripps, being founded as a 1920's liberal arts school, did not yet offer classes in physics and chemistry, much less degrees in the science disciplines. Jane had to attend those classes at the affiliated Pomona College across the street and graduated from Scripps in 1934. She returned to Denver after graduation and in 1937, she married William Andrew McGilvray, a Colorado School of Mines graduate, whom she had known since high school. They were wed in her parents' home at 825 Vine St. in the house her father had built, and where she grew up. She and Bill moved with Bill's job with Gulf Oil as a surveyor, living in such exotic places as Eads and Cheyenne Wells in Colorado, and Duncan, Oklahoma. Bill subsequently secured an appointment as Professor of Military Science at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He was teaching there when their first child, Bruce, was born in mid-1941, and continued to teach there until being called to active duty in 1944. Jane and young Bruce returned to Denver to live with her mother (her father having recently passed away) until after the war. During that time, she worked at what was known then as the University of Colorado, School of Medicine and Hospitals, now the CU Medical Center. While there, she worked in the research lab, did surgical photography, and was an x-ray technician. She spent six worried months following Bill's capture in the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, but was at home to greet him when he returned in June, 1945. Bill got a job as an industrial hygiene engineer, and he and Jane bought the home in Lakewood where Jane lived for the next sixty-seven years, forty of those with Bill at her side. In 1948, not long after moving in to their new home, Alan was born, and not long after that, they expanded the house to include a dining room, another bedroom, bathroom, and a large train/recreation room. Jane did a fair amount of work on the addition. She designed or made all the dining room furniture, and wove a twenty foot roll-up blind for the large west-facing windows of the new dining room. Jane and Bill had a large circle of friends, and they regularly went square dancing (or hosted it in their living room), enjoyed league bowling, and Bridge. They joined the Lakewood Country Club for the golf and the swimming. But their real love in those days was travel, and she and Bill went all over the world, usually as part of the Ports of Call Travel club, with whom they took over 50 trips. True to her nature, all the places she visited were her favorites. Just like the people she met, she was fond of them all, and did not mind saying so. In 1998, Jane acquired a minivan which she used for road trips, often taking several of her friends on day trips around the metro area and into the nearby mountains. A favorite destination was Shawnee, up US 285 from Denver. There was a large family cabin there, complete with a one-lane bowling alley, which had been built by her uncle and her father when she was a child. As a child, she often rode the long-gone narrow gauge Denver, South Park, and Pacific passenger train up to Shawnee from Denver to go to the cabin. Her family had many happy times there. She also liked to drive to the ranch owned by her sister Nornie, and Nornie's husband, Bob. The ranch was just down the river from Shawnee, and Bill had helped raise the barn there. Somehow in the midst of raising a family and traveling, Jane found time to take up a new hobby, ceramics, and her creations, both practical and whimsical, delight her family today. She loved to experiment with glazes and colors, and clay types, and kept meticulous notes of the chemical compounds that went into each of them. She acquired dozens of types of clay and powdered minerals from all over the country, including her own front yard. There are still a couple hundred pounds of ceramics creation materials stored in the basement shop to this day. All was not clay and travel with Jane. She and her brother Steve also owned Technical Equipment Corporation (TEC), which sold medical and industrial x-ray and testing equipment and supplies. Among other things, the company created the Deltatherm, a differential thermal analysis device. Jane was very involved in the development and prototype testing of the high temperature furnaces and instrumentation that were its heart. After TEC had been made redundant by much larger firms, and had closed its doors after more than three decades, Jane got back into ceramics, but soon found a new and interesting hobby, woodcarving. Not just any woodcarving, though. During her travels, she became fascinated with the woodcarvings of the Hopi Indians, in particular, the Kachina dolls. She taught herself how to carve human shapes, as well as more imaginative figures. She adapted one Hopi purpose of the dolls, that of carving dolls which represented the lives of the people she made them for. She called them Karma Kachinas. From the first, she always carved them, as the Hopis did, from roots of cottonwood trees. Many hours were spent by family members searching out cottonwood roots to give her to work with. She did some commission work, but much of her time was spent on Kachinas for her grandchildren, each lovingly-carved doll having multiple symbolic items of that grandchild's life. She continued carving even as she approached her hundredth birthday. Jane also decorated, with intricate and often interlocking American Indian or ocean motifs, hardwood balls about the size of croquet balls. She called these ""Spherit Balls"". She gave many away, but also sold many at the gift shop of the Colorado History Museum, where she volunteered. She also did volunteer work at the Denver Art Museum. While working there, she made several delicately glazed miniature ceramic tea pot and cup sets, and gave them as gifts to other volunteers. The Museum staff was quite impressed with her work, and they asked her to make additional sets to sell in the Art Museum's gift shop. When her health finally required that she move to assisted living in late 2012 at the age of 99, the thing she missed the most was her beloved shop, the original basement portion of the house. Here she had her potter's wheel, three kilns, precision scales, microscopes, a band saw, a table saw, a drill press, a belt sander, a jig saw, and a work table where she carved and painted. She used them all (except the table saw which Alan decided was just too dangerous) almost until the day she moved. Jane truly enjoyed her hundredth birthday celebration at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, attended by nearly a hundred family and friends, as well as a bagpiper and a dance band. With Jane there on that very special birthday, a good time was had by all. She always claimed that the secret to health and long life was chocolate, and apparently it is. To paraphrase many of the people who have acknowledged her passing with touching words and cards, she was a lovely, remarkable, kind, and interesting person that caused all who met her to smile and know that she liked them, and that the feeling was mutual. Memorial services will be held Saturday, August 15, 2015, at 3:00 PM at the Horan and McConaty Family Chapel at 3101 S. Wadsworth Blvd., Lakewood, CO 80227.