Anne Snow

Anne Cameron Forrester was born in the town of Shipley in Yorkshire, England, and died peacefully on June 19, 2015. She was the oldest daughter and second of four children of George Forrester, a teacher and school headmaster, and Sabina Kate Cameron Forrester, a seamstress. Anne attended Catholic schools (named after St. Walburga and St. Joseph) in Bradford, Yorkshire. She had hoped to attend the University of Leeds and study genetics, which she found fascinating, but did not pass the scholarship examination because "the nuns didn't teach us fractions." Instead she attended teacher's training college and then taught junior high school in England for five years. During those summers she hitchhiked around Europe with a friend, staying in youth hostels. At 25, she took a boat to New York and then a plane to San Francisco to visit her father's two sisters. She planned to spend a year or two away from Yorkshire's rainy weather, and as a teacher she quickly found work in the Bay Area. She met Robert Clapp, and they married in 1957; some years later they moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she would remain after they divorced. To support her four children (then aged seven, four, two, and zero), Anne made the family home on University Hill into a day care center; some of the parents who brought their children told her she was "the best daycare mother in Boulder." In 1979 Anne met Gordon "Scotty" Snow, a teacher in the Nederland schools, and they married in summer of 1980. The following summer Anne moved with three of her children to join Scotty and his son Kent in the house on Sugarloaf Road where she would live for over thirty years. Getting to know her six stepchildren and their children was a lasting pleasure for her. She began substitute teaching in Gold Hill and elsewhere, and then settled down to teach second grade at Nederland Elementary School. She loved her colleagues and the drive to work along the Peak-to-Peak Highway, except when she had to dig her car out of snowdrifts on Sugarloaf Road. After retirement in 1995, Anne greatly enjoyed socializing with other senior citizens in Nederland; attending meetings of the Red Hat Club; knitting tea cosies and other useful objects; learning to use watercolors (she sold a fair number of cards featuring her paintings of flowers and birds). She attended St Rita Catholic Church in Nederland and was often asked to do a reading during Mass, thanks to her mellifluous accent. She loved and appreciated her neighbors in Coughlin Meadows and her many friends in Nederland and Boulder. Anne loved a good game of Scrabble and was fairly gracious on the rare occasions when she lost. Her green thumb raised a rich variety of houseplants on all her south-facing windowsills. She loved a good cup of tea, and chatting over tea with friends, neighbors, and members of her large blended family. She spent many happy hours watching birds and various wildlife passing through her yard, though she began taking in the bird feeders at night after two episodes when hungry bears clambered up on her porch. She loved living in the mountains and hoped to spend the rest of her life there. Anne Snow was predeceased by her husband, Gordon Snow, her brother William Forrester, and her stepson Kent Snow (Maria) of Rapid City, SD. She is survived by her sisters Mary Willcock (Gerald) of Cumbria, UK, and Anna Golder (Alan) of Reno, Nevada; her four children, Sibelan Forrester of Swarthmore, PA, Raian Kaiser of Berthoud, CO, Mary Waterman (Michael) of Vestal, NY, and Robert Clapp of Grand Junction, CO; five stepchildren, Jim Snow (Kathy) of Boulder, CO, Kathy Sills (Richard) of Longmont, CO; Fran McReynolds (Charles) of Hillsboro, OR, David Snow (Tracy) of Niwot, CO, and Laura Snow (Jim Adleman) of Ft. Collins, CO; seventeen grand- and step-grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. A memorial mass will be held at St. Rita Catholic Church in Nederland on Saturday, July 18, at 11:00 a.m., with a memorial high tea and potluck to follow at the Nederland Community Center, beginning around 12:00 or 12:30 p.m. Contributions in memory of Anne Snow may be made to the National Brain Tumor Society (in honor of the late Kent Snow) or to the Women's Ordination Conference.