Virginia Warren Christenson

Virginia Warren Christenson passed away peacefully in her home at the Wind Crest community on June 10, 2020, one month before her 96th birthday, following a hard fought battle with dementia. Virginia was born in LaGrange, Illinois, the youngest of 6 children. She learned to be fiesty and hold her ground early, growing up with 4 older brothers. Virginia loved spending summers at her family's cottage at Crystal Lake, Michigan, where her father taught her to play golf and she spent many hours swimming and fishing. Education was important to Virginia. In 1946 she earned her bachelors degree in geology from Carleton college and in 1948, her masters degree in geology from the University of Wisconsin. She began her career as a geologist in Bakersfield, California and continued on to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she met her future husband, Maynard, also a geologist. They enjoyed playing golf, tennis and bridge together and were married in 1954. She and Maynard relocated 6 times with his company, Cities Service Oil/Occidental Petroleum Corp., and ended up settling in the Denver, Colorado area in 1970. In 1956, they spent a year in Bogata, Columbia, South America where she learned Spanish and continued to use key phrases through her final days. Before her career as a geologist, Virginia worked for a bomb factory during WWII and had summer jobs picking cherries and serving at the Cherry Hut restaurant at Crystal Lake. During college she spent summers working as a paleontologist for the Field Museum in Chicago. She did many volunteer jobs while raising her kids and settling her family in a new city every few years. These included the American Red Cross, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, school library assistant and the Episcopal church as a Sunday School teacher and Altar Guild member for many years. Virginia was very organized, kept a meticulous home, and wrote many notes and letters with her very distinguished and uniquely perfect left handed script. She and Maynard enjoyed travel in their retirement. Favorite trips included visits with out of town relatives, yearly winter trips to Mexico and many summer trips to Vail and Rocky Mountain National Park. They adored their 2 grandsons, Jordan and Ryan and spent much time caring for them and watching them grow up. Virginia is preceded in death by her husband, Maynard ""Chris"" G. Christenson and survived by son John Christenson (Marilyn), daughter Janet Brown(Steve) and grandson's Jordan Brown and Ryan Brown. A memorial service to celebrate Virginia's life will be held 11:00 AM June 25 at Horan and McConaty chapel, 5303 E. County Line Rd, Centennial, CO. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her name to Suncrest Hospice of Colorado at http://bristolfoundation.org/support/ or the Alzheimer's Association at https://www.alz.org/ . She was very loved and will be greatly missed.