To Cecilia Foreman, who died March 25 at age 95 in a Lakewood care facility, life meant work.
Right after high school, she began working on a ranch outside of Powderhorn, near Gunnison.
She cooked and cleaned for the ranch hands employed by her sister and brother-in-law, Lorelia and Alva Sammons.
“Chickens had to be caught, killed and plucked, wood had to be chopped for the fire” and butter had to be churned, said daughter Liz Barkl of Leadville.
Barkl said her mother “never had time to enjoy anything.”
While at the ranch, she met Ralph Foreman, a miner, and they married in 1933. They moved to Leadville, then lived in Ouray and again in Leadville.
He never “struck it rich,” so the family didn’t have frills. The kids were bathed in a galvanized tub in the kitchen.
Ralph Foreman fell ill when he was 48. He had a lung illness, tuberculosis and spinal meningitis. For years, he was paralyzed from the waist down. He died in 1967.
His illnesses “had to be emotionally terrifying for my mother,” Barkl said.
Cecilia Foreman went to work full time at the Delaware Hotel, while attending to her husband and rearing four daughters.
She did nearly everything at the hotel, from checking in guests to cleaning rooms. She also cleaned private homes and babysat, said daughter Zoe Vigil of Denver. Pay ranged from 75 cents to $3 an hour.
When Foreman retired at 70, “she just decided to rest” — not taking up “movies or bowling or anything,” Barkl said.
The one event Foreman always liked was the family Labor Day picnic.
“She was a good cook,” usually making macaroni salad, fried chicken, potato salad and carrot salad for the picnic, Barkl said.
Foreman never forgot the hard times and told her children to save their money.
“She took life pretty seriously,” Vigil said.
She rarely bought anything for herself but loved to buy for her grandchildren.
Cecelia Brandenburg was born on a ranch near West cliffe on Nov. 28, 1912.
She attended the one-room Willows country school and had been its oldest former student. The school has been preserved as a historic building.
She graduated from Cañon City High School.
In addition to her daughters, she is survived by 14 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
Two daughters preceded her in death: Geraldine Robison in 1976 and Virginia Power in 1999.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
