Cecilia Annette Meyer

Cecilia Annette (Cele) Potwardoski Crookston Meyer passed away peacefully at home on June 3, 2022. Born March 3, 1924 in Pinconning, Michigan to Fransiczeck (Frank) Potwardowski and Aniela (Nellie) Kamon, Cecilia was the fourth child of a family of four boys and two girls, plus an older half-sister from Frank’s first marriage. Cecilia and her siblings were the first generation of their family born in the USA, as both of her parents had emigrated from Poland. During the Great Depression (when Cecilia was about eight years old) her parents separated, and Nellie took the children to live with her parents on the Kamon family farm near Goetzville, Michigan.

When Cecilia was thirteen, she went to work for another family in order to finish high school, which she did in 1941 at age seventeen. Because she was too young to enter nursing school, she lived with her half-sister, Irene, in Round Lake, New York, for a year, and worked at various jobs. This was during World War II, and because the otherwise all-Jewish nursing school was required to meet a quota of non-Jewish students, Cecilia was given the opportunity to attend college without tuition. She graduated as a registered nurse from Mt. Sinai Hospital School of Nursing in 1945. From New York she moved to Hollywood, California, to work at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. She met her future husband, Burns Ballantyne Crookston, in California and they corresponded for several years, as she continued to work in California while he returned to New York to complete his Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Cecilia traveled to Michigan in January of 1949 to care for her mother, who passed away from cancer in February. When Burns and Cecilia decided to tie the knot, Burns flew to California to meet Cecilia and they rode by bus to Elko, Nevada, where they were married January 26, 1952. They continued on to Logan, Utah, for a wedding reception hosted by Burns' family, and to pick up an automobile. Then they drove on to New York City, where Burns finished his degree while Cecilia worked as a nurse.

Cecilia traded her nursing career for life as a homemaker and mother to their four children when Burns began his career in higher education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The family moved to Fort Collins, Colorado in 1962, and then to Storrs, Connecticut in 1971. After Burns died in 1975, Cecilia moved her family back to Fort Collins and worked part-time as a nurse for several different companies. She met John Meyer in Fort Collins and they were married in 1978. During their retirement years, Cecilia and John enjoyed traveling to several European countries and went on two ocean cruises. John passed away in 1997.

Cecilia was predeceased by her parents, her two husbands, and siblings Irene Bennett, Leon Potwardski, Margaret Galarowic, and Bernard Potwardowski. She is survived by brothers, Edward Potwardowski and Joseph Potwardowski, and all of her descendants-- Four children: Claudia (Steve) Parker, Linda (Gragg) Meyer, Randal Crookston and Nicholas Crookston, eight grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren.