Fern Fair Pickering was 104 when she
died Aug. 11 in Denver, but that didn’t
mean she was part of “the blue-hair
club” said her grandson David Fair
Tessler of Girdwood, Alaska.
She had friends in every generation,
he said. “Twenty-year-olds would
come to visit and just hang out with
her.”
Tessler called his grandmother “the
most remarkable person I ever knew”
and he believes it was because “you always
felt she absolutely believed in you
more than anyone else did.”
Pickering, who was a piano teacher
and leader of meditation classes until
near the end of her life, “knew how to
draw out people and asked insightful
questions. She’d get an inkling of what
it was you were just itching to get out,”
Tessler said.
Pickering made
friends through teaching
music at her home
and in schools, and
through weekly meditation
classes she held
in her home for 50
years. Over the years
more than one generation
in the same family
came to meditation
classes.
Pickering visited numerous
churches “expecting
truth could be found almost anyplace,”
said her granddaughter, Stacy
Fair Tessler of Denver.
Meditation for Pickering meant training
one’s mindto focusonwhat was needed
or wanted or the goals people had.
“She thought many people wasted
their minds instead of focusing,” Stacy
Tessler said. She also believed in paying
attention to images and that the subconscious
had answers.
“She kept her own mind active until
about two years ago,” Stacy Tessler
said, and tutored kids in reading until a
few years ago.
Pickering went into residential real estate
after “retiring” from teaching. “She
considered it a personal challenge to
put people in the right house in the right
area to make them happy,” Stacy
Tessler said.
Fern Maudie Ferree was born Sept. 14,
1900, in Bradshaw, Neb., graduated
from Peru State Teachers’ College in
Peru, Neb., and the University of Nebraska.
She studied piano, speech and
English, and learned to play the tenor
sax, guitar and ukulele. She taught music
in Idaho and Illinois.
She married Rex Fair, who was one of
her music professors, and they moved
to Denver in 1943 when he got a teaching
job at the University of Colorado in
Boulder.
The two performed often she accompanying
him on the flute. He died in
1956.
Fern Fair taught music for years, and
among her students was her granddaughter.
“She was not one of those
crabby teachers, but she expected students
to practice every day,”Stacy
Tessler said.
Fern Fair later married Harold E. Pickering.
He preceded her in death, as did
her only child, Yvonne Tessler.
In addition to her grandson and granddaughter,
she is survived by another
grandson, John Fair Tessler of Sacramento,
Calif., and three great-grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be
reached at 303-820-1223 or
vculver@denverpost.com.
