Being pregnant and unmarried wasn’t easy for young women in the 1960s.
Giving up her child was even more difficult for Virginia Carrillo. The few people who knew said she just wanted to know her son was with a good family.
Years later her son found her, and the two became good friends, said her son, Arthur Daniel of Colorado Springs. She also became friends with his adoptive parents.
Daniel met his mother in 1995 after a search of several years.
Carrillo, who died Oct. 28 at age 84, moved to Colorado to give birth. She then finished her college degrees and eventually became assistant dean of women at the University of Colorado.
She later was a counselor at CU and Red Rocks Community College.
Carrillo “was very buoyant and vibrant,” said her stepson, Lee Carrillo of Denver. “She stood by me in a lot of things.”
Students liked her, he said, “because she was straightforward.”
Carrillo made long-lasting friends where she taught, where she volunteered and where she liked to go for a drink – at Poppie’s Restaurant in southeast Denver.
“She always liked single-malt scotch, and she’d order a glass of ice with it,” said Jerry Wilczew ski of Aurora. “She put a few ice cubes in the scotch. I put a bottle of scotch and a teaspoon in her casket.
“She was a feisty, kindhearted woman who could tell good stories. And she made a drink last for two or three hours,” said Wilczewski, who called the 5-foot-2 Carrillo “Stubby.”
She enjoyed smoking a pipe.
Carol McLaughlin, a friend of Carrillo’s in the American Legion Auxiliary, said, “She was an independent woman. She was still driving shortly before she died.”
“She loved her friends and was a good listener,” said Karen Chouinard of Golden.
Virginia Fly was born in Grayville, Ill., on July 27, 1922. She graduated from high school in Evansville, Ind., and earned her bachelor’s degree from Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Mo., and her master’s in psychology at the University of Minnesota.
Family pressure led her to move to Colorado to give birth to her son. She left Colorado and then moved back when she got the CU job.
In 1965, she married Otis Carrillo, whom she had met at the Trocadero Ballroom at Elitch Gardens, her son said.
The two also liked to go “Jeeping” and camping out. Otis Carrillo died in 1981.
In addition to her son and stepson, she is survived by her stepdaughter, Lynne Carrillo, and step-grandson, Jeremy Carrillo, both of Rio Rico, Ariz.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
