Kelly Anderson Memorial

by R. Malcolm Brown, Jr.

In Memory of my Dear Friend and Fellow Human Being
"Kelly"

Kelly at his home outside of Rifle, taken in 1999 during a wonderful visit to the Anderson residence.

Preface
I have known Kelly Anderson all my life. He grew up in Pampa, Texas and was a very close friend of my family. My father knew Kelly when he was a boy. In the 1940s my dad found this beautiful deer hunting place in Colorado called Coulter Lake Guest Ranch.

It may be that even in these early times, Kelly was working summers there as a ranch hand. Anyway, I am sure that Lucy can straighten me out on these facts. These early years led to our family taking summer vacations at Coulter Lake in the late 1940s, continuing up until I married and then years after. I always visit this beloved place each year I come to Colorado. In fact, the last time I saw Kelly was this past summer, 2000, when we spent the night with Kelly and Lucy and took a beautiful whirlwind tour of Coulters and the surrounding countryside, including a visit to the new cabin being built by Kelly's sons.

Coulter Lake Guest Ranch is a beautiful place. Mr. and Mrs. Coulter built the lake and started this place.

click on photo Kelly was a ranch hand there and Lucy had come up from Greeley Colorado to work also. There a romance developed between the two and the rest is history. Eventually, Kelly and Lucy were able to purchase Coulter Lake Guest Ranch, and they ran it very successfully for many years. When Kelly retired from the Guest Ranch business, he was still very active. He volunteered with the Rifle Snowmobile Club and virtually single-handedly kept the trails groomed in the winter months. Kelly's time was with his friends and associates. On the second page, you will see some photos of the new snowmobile trail groomer. Kelly was very proud of this machine. He also tremendously enjoyed golf and was instrumental in the origin and development of the Rifle Creek golf course which is very very beautiful. Kelly was a family man and extremely proud of his own children and their successes. He also was proud of his grandchildren. I know that he will be sorely missed by his family and by the greater Rifle area community as well as friends in Pampa and elsewhere.

So, it is with great sadness that today (February 17, 2001), I learned that Kelly passed away yesterday as a consequence of complications with congestive heart failure. Kelly had just returned last week from a 20+ day stay in the hospital in Grand Junction, and I had talked with Lucy, and we all were hopeful that Kelly would recover; however this was not to be. Kelly had lost his mother just a few weeks earlier and could not attend her funeral because he was in the hospital. So I can fully appreciate the severe stresses that have been placed on Lucy and her family in past days. In my grief, I can think of no other way to let Kelly's family know how much Kelly meant to me except to make this little memorial for Kelly. I hope that through this remembrance, Kelly Anderson's spirit will live on, and we shall never forget this person who inspired so many others through examples of his own life, a full life with a loving family and wife, and many friends over the years.

Kelly and Lucy probably have lived most of their lives in and around Rifle and Coulters. This is God's country and their country. Their children were raised in this beautiful setting, and I am sure that they feel as I do, Kelly is now at peace, and we can all be thankful that he did not have to suffer too long or lead the life of an invalid after the congestive heart failure. In spite of being thankful to spare Kelly pain and suffering, I only wish that he could still be with us. His sense of direction and place in the Universe and his understanding of Nature and Order have helped me to understand myself better. I am truly at a loss of words in expressing my sorrow and grief over the loss of a dear friend whom I had come to know much better only in the latter years of my life. Simply put, we just did not have enough of that precious "good" time together.

When I awoke this morning, little did I know what I would learn in the afternoon with Lucy's telephone call. I had just removed my daily quote from my calendar. The one for yesterday was from The Dalai Lama. Here is what he said, "I believe the ultimate aim of all human beings is to obtain happiness and a sense of fulfillment...I have always stressed the importance of combining both the mental and material approach to achieving happiness for humankind". I believe The Dalai Lama's points are very accurately portrayed through the life of Kelly Anderson, a man who pursued happiness and obtained a sense of fulfillment. God Bless you, Kelly.

Sunset over Pampa, Texas, site of Kelly's birth and boyhood

The Web Page

I have divided my little memorial into two pages. I made the photos sufficiently small that they will download rapidly. Just click on the thumbnails below to see an enlargement. The photos on this page were made during our visit with the Andersons in the summer of 1999. Just prior to that visit in February, 1999, Ann and I got to visit the Andersons, and Kelly took us up into the great Back Country of the White River National Forest on snowmobiles. What a trip! I shall never forget this magnificent scenery. One of the most memorable experiences is hanging on for dear life on the back of Kelly's snowmobile when I told him to "gun it" so that I could get a "bird's eye" video view of what it is like to go zipping through the forest at 60 mph. Well, that video is a thriller! Who else but Kelly would be willing to take his friends to the "edge" so that they could see what it really was like to be on top of the world with respect to a winter's eye view of this magnificent countryside. Photos of that visit are shown on the second page.

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Be sure to click on the next page below to review photos taken last year.

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Created by R. Malcolm Brown, Jr.
February 17, 2001