Edith Allen Briggs

She was born April 22, 1929 in Tempe, Arizona to John Sherman Allen and Lola Pike Allen.

Like the super-smarty she was her entire life, Edith graduated as valedictorian from Flagstaff High School in 1947. She then attended Northern Arizona State Teachers College (now Northern Arizona University), walking each day from her parents’ home on West Grand Canyon Avenue. She earned a double bachelor’s degree, in physical sciences (physics, chemistry, astronomy and earth sciences) and Spanish, in 1951.

Always up for adventure, Edith worked at the Grand Canyon during college, staying in the dorm and once riding a mule to the bottom of the canyon.

She met her future husband Roger in Flagstaff, where he had a summer job with the Forest Service. They settled in Colorado Springs, Colorado and had three children, Robin in 1953, Linda (“Boo”) in 1956, and Margaret (“Peg”) in 1958. She and Roger bought a small plot of land on the west side of Colorado Springs and built their first house themselves on Wilhelmia Ave. In 1962, the young family moved to Woodmen Valley, a rural wooded area north of the city and bordering the U.S. Air Force Academy. Working evenings and weekends with Roger, Edith helped build the house the family would live in for the next 20 years.

Edith liked to bicycle with her three kids and rode many miles with them on the roads of Woodmen Valley and beyond on her blue upright three-speed Schwinn, and later a much-loved Peugeot 10-speed that she bought “so I can keep up with you kids for a while longer.” In case of rain, she always kept a Readers Digest in the handlebar bag so she could “wait it out under a bridge.”

Edith adored dogs, and from their first boxer, Hilda, the family always had a dog around – Little Jon, Saxon, Heidi, and then Vixen and finally Sadie, her beloved basset hound. Part of the structure of her day was the morning and evening dog walks. Later, when she moved from Woodmen Valley to W. Cascade Avenue in downtown Colorado Springs, she either walked along the creek in Monument Valley Park, or drove Sadie to Bear Creek Dog Park for a daily romp.

Having a passion for photography as well as travel, she never went on a trip without her camera. Family members learned to wait with frozen smiles as she endlessly adjusted settings for the best exposure – and then invariably misplaced the lens cap. She won an award for a photo of La Jolla Shores taken during one of her summer visits to San Diego. It was later featured in the yearly calendar for Kaman Sciences, where she worked for many years as a Research Scientist, with a brief stint at Resource Science Inc. This was during an era when few women had professional positions in the sciences.

Edith remained a scientist and lover of knowledge all her life -- pointing out constellations in the night sky, always interested in etymology and discussing word meanings and derivations, and with a periodic table of the elements hanging on her apartment wall to the end as she wrestled with crossword puzzles and word games in her easy chair, Sadie at her feet.

She loved to hike and was a member of a Colorado Springs group of older hikers whose motto was, “Collect Memories Not Things.” Edith was an active member of Trinity United Methodist Church for over 60 years, singing in the choir (she played the piano as well), working on the library committee, and working with “Circle,” the women’s support group, with many of her closest friends.

In 2016, Edith sold her home in Colorado and moved to California, long a dream of hers because of the warm weather. She experienced mostly wonderful care in a retirement community 10 minutes from her daughter Linda and daughter-in-law Paula. One of her favorite mid-week outings with Linda was to the nail spa for a manicure, then out for a burger, fries and an ice-cold coke.

She is survived by her sisters Juanita Gillis of Flagstaff and Luella Sanford of Tempe, daughters Linda Briggs of San Diego and Margaret Pelletier of New York, grandchildren Derek and Amanda, and many nieces and nephews.