Connie Calkin never walked into a room full of strangers. “They were all people she’d like to know,” said her daughter, Ann Sauer of Golden.
Calkin, who died June 5 at her home in Golden, had friends all over from her work as an official of the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, the agencies she worked with in connection with the school and her kids’ friends.
A service is planned at 2 p.m. June 25 at the Graduate School of Social Work, Craig Hall, 2148 South High St.
Calkin was field director for the school, meaning she placed students in their “intern” jobs.
And “she did a wonderful job,” said her boss, Catherine Alter, dean of the school.
Calkin “had a very creative way of developing a model for the fieldwork,” Alter said.
“She was like a second mom” to her children’s friends and “opened the doors of our home” to high school or college friends of her own kids, Sauer said. She loved taking her grandchildren on outings and instilled in them what she did in her children, that they could accomplish anything they set their minds to.
“She had a delightful sense of life,” said her husband, Bill Calkin.
Connie Calkin was co-founder, along with Carroll Brown now of Irving, Texas, of the Colorado chapter of Big Sisters and was director 1973-78.
Constance Leone Lewis was born May 10, 1933, in Milo, Maine, and graduated from the University of Maine .
It was there that she met Bill Calkin, an engineering student, and they married Aug. 19, 1956.
They moved to Denver after his Air Force service. She earned master’s and doctorate degrees in social work at DU.
In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by another daughter: Amy Glen of Thornton; her son, John Calkin of Durango; seven grandchildren; three brothers, Wayne Wilson of Conifer, Eric Wilson of Massachusetts, and Joe Wilson of Springfield, Vt.; and two sisters, Gayle Lucas of Pineville, La., and Karen Seams of Anson, Maine.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at vculver@denverpost.com or 303-820-1223.
