John Washburn McPhee

John Washburn McPhee—known to many as Jock—died at home in Santa Fe on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, at the age of 76. Jock was a loving husband, brother, and uncle, an athlete, a mountain man, an activist, health educator, policy analyst, and an eternal optimist.

Jock was born in Denver, Colorado, on June 17, 1949. His family moved to New York but returned to Colorado when he was twelve. From then on, Jock was dedicated to the West, from his first job at fourteen cooking hamburgers on a food truck following the rodeo circuit in Colorado, to working as a counselor and guide for the Sanborn Western Camps, to stints with the National Park Service in Point Reyes and Rocky Mountain National Park, to log cabin building in Estes Park, to his most rewarding work as the Childhood Injury Prevention Coordinator and Consumer Product Safety Commission State Designee for the New Mexico Dept. of Health. He retired in 2020 after 23 years. He was especially proud of helping to enact a 2007 state bicycle helmet law for children.

Jock was the great-grandson of New Mexico pioneer John Arthur Eddy who, with his brother Charles, founded the towns of Alamogordo, Cloudcroft, Capitán, Carrizozo, and Carlsbad. He graduated from Palmer High School in Colorado Springs and Lake Forest College. He spent a college year abroad in Greece and then hitchhiked to Switzerland to be a mountaineering guide and teach at the experimental University of the New World (where he earned the distinction of being hit on by William Burroughs). He continued his adventures overseas in Spain, harvesting grapes in the South of France, hitchhiking across North Africa, and teaching English in Athens. He met his beloved wife, Lizabeth VanderVeen, in Morocco and ran into her again by chance in Athens. They spent 46 years together, until Liza's death in 2020. After six months in Athens and Crete, they moved to Colorado, traveled and lived in Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Indonesia, and elsewhere, finally settling in Santa Fe, where Jock made his home for the last 33 years.

Jock was still playing on a local ice hockey team in his mid-seventies and coordinating and advocating for community at the rink. He also advocated for utility and cell phone safety. In the summer of 2023, he set out alone in his car on a 4,500-mile Drive About of the West to visit family members and friends, writing later, "It was the most extraordinary, and longest, road trip I had ever taken in the United States, and it reminded me every hour and every day of why I love and adore the Rocky Mountain region and West Coast. The sharing we all did was simply priceless, and I will never forget any of you and your lives, not for a moment."

Jock is survived by his sisters Caroline (Wendy) McPhee of Portland, Oregon, and Sarah McPhee of Stockholm, Sweden, and his nieces and nephews in California, Oregon, and Sweden. His enthusiasm, energy, and love will be deeply missed by all who knew him.

A private memorial service will be held in Santa Fe and at a later date in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Donations in Jock's honor can be made to his favorite charity, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for children) in Santa Fe: CASA, First Judicial District, 466 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe, NM 87501.