GENE MACK
I am sad to report that my classmate Gene Mack, now of Greeley, passed away this week. He had been in a care center for about a year. He graduated with my Lyons High School Class of 1945, with only six of us: Gene, Me-LaVern McConnell, Joan Kelly, Helen Archie, Marjorie Van Pelt, and Betty
Bay. It was a small class but mighty. With both our mothers as teachers, Gene and I vied for top grades all 12 years, me winning by about one tenth of one percent. He went to CU, and I had a scholarship to CU but went to Barnes
Business School with classmate Joan Kelly. It is sad that the Class of 1945 is nearly gone… a good vivacious class, participating in plays, and played softball, and practiced basketball, but no team. They stopped the Colorado girls sports in 1943; and finally revived girls sports with Title 9, in 1976. Gene was a congregational minister for several years and later got into Social Services. He married JoAnne Mauch and had four children. His family lives in Greeley.
1/9/20 This is a follow up of the full obituary that I wrote last week. (LaVern Johnson, Lyons Historian)
A Celebration of Life Service was held on Monday in Greeley for my last Classmate of our graduating Class of 1945, at the St. John’s Church of Christ, Greeley. He graduated with five girls (myself, Joan Kelly, Helen Archie, Marjorie Van Pelt and Betty Bay) from Lyons High School, and went to the service, then to Grinnell College, and then Yale Divinity School and became a United Church of Christ minister. He preached at Eaton, Evans, Collbran, and Longmont. He was married to Joanne (Mauch) for 60 years and had four children: Lisa, Sheila, Kevin and Scott and several grandchildren. He was uncle to Vince of Eaton, and Adam now of Huntington Beach, CA; who were all at his service. Farewell, Gene, almost the end of the Class of 1945! You will be sadly missed. The history of the Mack Family is on the Lyons Recorder Facebook page, and the Lyons History Facebook page, and the Pioneer Book.
Fred & Gertrude Mack
Gene was the son of Fred & Gertrude Mack who married in Fort Morgan
in 1924. She was from the Alps family in Illinois, who lived in Hygiene and later homesteaded in Loveland. They operated a farm in Estes Park for five years. In 1931, they moved to a farm on Apple Valley Road where he planted fruit trees and raised raspberries. They were active in the Old Stone Church . He died in November 1966. She taught 5th and 6th grade in Lyons for 15 years. She died in 1978.
==Material gathered and memories shared by LaVern Johnson; and supplemented by Kathleen Spring with facts shared by family.