Christine Brehm Blair

Whether you knew her as Chris, Christine, Mrs. Blair, Grandma or Granny Playtime, you knew a special person.

Chris was born in Albany New York in 1934 to William (Bill) and Katharine (Katharine) Brehm and grew up spending her summers at Lake George with her parents and sister Diane, fishing, swimming, canoeing and otherwise taking part in outdoor activities. That didn’t change at home in Loudonville, where she spent time playing inter neighborhood baseball, riding her bicycle with her friend Mary Alice, or sledding on the hill leading on to Highway 9.

She had several stories that she liked to tell. One was about her father’s ongoing battle to defend his bird feeder from the local squirrels. As the story goes, one year he decided that he was going to wrap the tree the bird feeder hung from with linoleum. The idea was that the squirrels claws wouldn’t be able to grip the linoleum, hence the squirrel wouldn’t be able to get into the tree and eat the food from the birdfeeder. The squirrel came to the tree in typical squirrel fashion and started to go up – until it hit the linoleum, which behaved as expected and the squirrel found itself back on the ground. The squirrel tried a couple more times with the same result, and there was a quiet celebration in the Brehm house… until the squirrel backed up about fifteen feet and took off towards the tree full tilt and had its momentum carry it over the linoleum and successfully onwards to the branch where the quickly consumed bird feeder hung… Bill Brehm stopped putting the feeder out at that point.

Bill Brehm took Chris to New York City three times to see baseball. She saw the Giants play the St Louis Cardinals with Stan Musial twice and the Cleveland Indians with Bob Feller. There aren’t any specific stories about the Cardinal games, but with the recent rule change in major league baseball she talked about how Bob Feller took so much time between pitches that the crowd at Yankee Stadium would cheer when he started his wind up… Chris was an avid baseball fan throughout her life.

Chris attended the University of New Hampshire where she graduated cum laude in 1956. She talked about this experience with increasing frequency as time went along. She had a major disagreement with her mother about which school and degree she should pursue and was rescued by her father who told her to find a school she wanted to attend and he’d send her there. She sought a degree as a teacher and lived with a veterinarian and his wife, Daryl and Eunice Burgess outside Manchester New Hampshire while she did her student teaching at Manchester Central High School. Daryl worked with racehorses that would come to the farm for treatment. Chris talked about how he’d take them to the stream and walk them in the cold water. Daryl also taught her to play cribbage. She would gleefully yell “MUGGINS” if you tallied your score incorrectly. Eunice taught her to make baked beans – recipe below. This was a long time favorite for her (provide the beans were small white beans because they didn’t give you gas…).

Chris married Stephen (Steve) Blair after graduating and moved to Carmel, California, where she taught junior high school while Steve was in the military. From there they travelled back towards the east coast where Steve had a job waiting in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Her sister Diane was living in Denver at the time, so they stopped over. This was in the summer of 1958, the temperature was in the nineties that day, and overnight the temperature dropped into the sixties. The next day Steve went to look for a job, and that’s how Chris came to call Colorado home. We’re sure that the Haverhill, Massachusetts, branch of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company managed to backfill his position.

Chris and Steve made several friends while managing a small apartment complex on Fenton Street in Lakewood. Many became friends for life. One story involved the Loves. The Loves had invited Chris and Steve to dinner one evening. They had decided to do something special for their friends from the east coast. As the story goes, the phone rang a couple hours before the set time, and Mr. Love said, “the lobsters are running around on the kitchen counter – what should I do?” That got Steve out the door in a hurry…

Chris and Steve joined Lakewood Presbyterian Church. Over the next six decades, through many different pastors, Chris continued with the church teaching Sunday school, volunteering, lay reading, and becoming an Elder. She never shied away from disagreeing when she thought there was a better course for the church. Once Lakewood Presbyterian closed, she attended Arvada Presbyterian, and unfortunately it closed too.

Chris and Steve had two children while living on Fenton Street William (Bill) and Donald (Don). With a growing family they bought a house off 44th and Hoyt Street in Wheat Ridge. Many more friends were made. A few years later they moved to Chris’s house in Arvada as Bill was about to start school, and the Hoyt Street address was the other side of 44th from the school. This was in August 1964. Chris never moved again.

The sixties were filled with raising children, watching the space program evolve, model rockets, swim team, coaching soccer, horseback riding, trips to the emergency room (typically on the first day of daylight savings annually), skiing, camping, and otherwise leading an active life.

Where the sixties were filled with happiness, the seventies were another story. Bill Brehm died of cancer, Steve filed for divorce, and Chris was left with two adolescent boys and no job or income. She rose to the challenge. She started working part time with Welcome Wagon, substitute teaching, refereeing soccer, and enrolled in the University of Colorado to seek a master’s degree in special education. She graduated magna cum laude. She always told the story of how her son Bill tutored her in story problems so she could pass the math portion of the GRE to get into the University.

Once she had her degree, she took a position at Huron Junior High School in Northglenn to implement the special education program. She taught from 1976 until her retirement in 1997. As always, Chris made several friends. She also did things like turn her students’ desks away from the blackboard, give them mirrors, and then write backwards to keep her students engaged. Chris was always willing to go the extra mile to help others in her work, her worship, and in her life.

Chris’s son Bill and his wife Vicki had two sons, Brian and Derek. Brian and Derek would spend several weeks a summer with Chris – one of the perks of teaching was having the summer off – and she would take them on outings with Granny Playtime! She would pack them off for picnics in the park, to the swimming pool, fishing, to the Tattered Cover, and to ball games when the Colorado Rockies entered the National League. As the years went on this evolved into excursions to Elderhostel. One trip in particular stood out. In late June 1994 Chris and Brian went to an Elderhostel at Colorado State University’s Pingree Park campus. It was a very hot, dry summer, and a lightning strike on July 1 started one of the largest wildfires Colorado had seen at that time. It burned 13 of the 80 building on the campus. Chris and Brian were evacuating with everyone else, only Chris’s beloved Mercury Topaz wouldn’t start. They got a ride with some other people and went to the CSU campus in Fort Collins, and then home in a rental car but not before playing pool in the CSU dorm. A few days later one of the local news helicopters was covering the fire and zeroed in on a car (parked in one of the parking lots) with flames all around it. It was Chris’s Topaz. After the fire was out Chris arranged for the car to be towed from Pingree to a dealership in Fort Collins, which managed to get the largely undamaged but incredibly smelly car running. It came back to Arvada and then went to a restoration facility to be cleaned up. Chris drove the Topaz until it was totaled in a 2016 collision. It still had a slightly melted turn signal…

Retirement suited Chris. She spent time in her garden, going on outings with her friends and grandchildren, playing bridge, attending symphonies at the Denver Center and in the summers attending rehearsals at Chautauqua. She would also attend every baseball and soccer game she could get tickets for. For many years she had a rich social life filled with engagements and civic activities. She also started experiencing loss. First her grandson Derek passed, then her sister Diane, and then many of her long-time friends. Chris began helping friends in need with day-to-day activities and visiting those who were less blessed with good health. Then Chris’s son Bill passed.

Chris continued to pursue activities, visit with friends, and help people. Over the next few years, she would go off in her new blue Subaru whenever the opportunity arose, and come back exhausted and generally happy. Then COVID… Chris fit a lot of the descriptions of people at risk – over 60 with health complications. All her activities stopped in lock down. Chris spent the summer of 2020 in the front yard, sitting in the grass pulling weeds and exchanging greetings and anecdotes with anyone who happened by. She missed seeing her friends but was also petrified of catching COVID. This continued through the introduction of the COVID vaccines. She continued to get vaccinated through June 2023, but she never fully trusted that it would protect her, so she didn’t reengage with her previous schedule.

One of the bright spots in these years came in the form of a charming young lady named Harper Lee Blair, Chris’s great granddaughter! Chris’s grandson Brian and his wife Christine had the experience of having a COVID era baby. So, there were no hospital or home visits for the first 30 days of Harper’s life. Chris met Harper a little later, and Harper won Chris’s heart! Harper continued to charm and delight every time she saw Grandma Chris, the last time just a few days before Chris passed.

Chris’s last days were like many others that had preceded them, reading the newspaper with breakfast, working on the current jigsaw puzzle a bit, reading a novel, and watching sports on TV. She spent her last evening watching game one of the World Series, and then catching Steven Colbert’s monolog before heading to bed – two of her favorite things!

Chris wasn’t one to dwell on the bad in life. Chris always looked for the silver lining in every situation, and for reason to smile and laugh throughout the day, no matter what the day brought to her doorstep. These stories are only a snippet of Chris. You, her friends, and relations, all have your own stories about Chris. Please share them…

Whether you knew her as Chris, Christine, Mrs. Blair, Grandma or Granny Playtime, you knew a special person…

I knew her as mom.

I would not have the life I do without mom. Mom stood by me through thick and thin during some extremely difficult years. She didn’t give up on me while I sorted through the emotions and anger stemming from my parents’ divorce and was steadfast while I straightened out my life and got my act together. Without her I’d be a statistic.

Mom was that way. She’d take in and care for stray cats. She’d take on hopeless causes and managed to turn several of them into hopeful causes. As she aged and needed more and more help, she would always tell me that she didn’t want to be a burden… I’d respond to that with a line from a Hollies song, and a little literary license… “You ain’t heavy, you’re my mother”.

I will miss mom. I will miss the birthday cards that always made me laugh, and the wit that occasionally (err… regularly??) took me down a notch or two, but most of all I will miss the consistent, unwavering support for me – if not for what I was presently doing – that was always there. That is a gift that will stay with me forever.

Eunice Burgess Baked Beans

1 cup small white beans (https://www.goya.com/en/products/small-white-beans-dry)

1 tsp salt

½ cup sugar plus a bit

¼ tsp dry mustard

½ cup catsup

Chunk salt pork

Soak beans overnight. Drain. Boil until the skins crack – about an hour.

Scald the salt pork.

Drain the beans and put in bean pot.

Add salt, sugar, mustard, catsup and stir to evenly combine. Cover with ample water. Put salt pork on top. Cover and bake for 9 hours at 275 degrees, checking occasionally to see if more water is needed.

A memorial service will be scheduled in the near future.

Please send contact information to blair.don.m@comcast.net so we can reach you.