Trista K. Conger

Trista K. Conger died peacefully on Thursday, September 6, 2007 at her home. Born Mayo Trist Kline on July 4, 1921 to artistic, expatriate parents in Nice, France, she attended the King Coit School and Children's Theatre, and Friends Seminary in New York City and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, CA in 1943. An actress from age 8, she played Ariel in "The Tempest" on Broadway for 2 weeks for the Hearst Milk Fund during the Great Depression. At 15, she started acting in summer stock. She was active in national student activities in college and spent a summer with Eleanor Roosevelt at Campobello with other student leaders. Trista met her future husband, Dr. John J. Conger, a Navy officer, on a blind date under the clock at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City. During WWII, she inspected B-17 engines for the Air Force. She taught at Graland Country Day School from 1954 to 1966, and was on the Mills College Board of Trustees for eight years. She helped establish a college graduate conference, "WORLDS FOR WOMEN" (College for a Day) and co-founded A CHILDREN'S CENTER FOR THE ARTS. Late in life, she discovered a passion for playwrighting and wrote many full-length plays. Her greatest success was "The Stones Cry Out," set in South Africa. It was a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and a semi-finalist for The Geraldine R. Dodge New American Play Award and played to sold-out houses on an extended run at The Theatre on Broadway in Denver in 1989. She was a member of Colorado Dramatists, the Dramatists Guild, The Author's League, and a member of The Playwrights Workshop of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and an Associate at the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute. Trista loved her family, friends, dogs, house and garden, the theatre and her summer home in Vermont. After 62 years of marriage, she lost her husband last summer. She is survived by her sons, Steven (MaryCatherine) of Carbondale, and David (Harriett) of Denver, her granddaughters, Chloe, of Santa Barbara, and Eleanor, of Brooklyn, and her nephew, Christopher Kline (Linnet) of Brooklyn. A private memorial service is planned. Memorials may be made to the University of Colorado Foundation, 225 E. 16th Ave, Ste 900, Denver, CO 80203. Please note Trista Conger Memorial Fund on check memo lines. Proceeds of the fund will be used for the Dr. John J. Conger Lectureship, dedicated to public policy's effect on the mental and physical health of children. Arrangements by Monarch Society.