Mary Frances Jones

She was born on April 5, 1935, in Fargo, North Dakota, to Helen Brazzell and was later adopted by Peter and Mayme Barthel in 1937. She grew up with an older sister Eileen, and an older brother Mervin in Missoula, Montana, attending St. Joseph’s School and Sacred Heart Academy where she developed her lifelong passion for music.

Mary Frances attended college first at Seattle University, in Seattle Washington, and then later Marylhurst College in Portland, Oregon. She majored in Music Performance at Marylhurst College, graduating in 1957.

After college, Mary Frances joined the US Federal Government working for the Central Intelligence Agency. She was stationed in Washington D.C. for one year, and later stationed in The Hague, Netherlands beginning in 1958. She spent two years with the CIA in Holland, allegedly with her own code name, and where famously she got on the wrong train for her first undercover assignment.

It was her first day on assignment in Holland when she met Michael Jones, a young British chemical engineer who was working for Shell Oil. After two years of working, sailing the Dutch canals, and gallivanting around Europe, Mary Frances lured Mike to the United States where the two were married on November 11, 1960 in Missoula, MT. They spent their honeymoon on a train traveling from Missoula to Oakland, California where Mike was to continue working for Shell. They had their first child, David, in early 1963 and moved to Boulder, Colorado in April 1964. Their son, Stephen, was born within days of their arrival in Boulder. Daughter, Kathryn, was born in Boulder in early 1966. The entire family returned to the Bay area, via the California Zephyr (complete with dome observation cars) to live in Berkeley 1968-69 while Mike attended the University of California at Berkeley. It was in California that the first family wagon was purchased: 1967 VW split-window camper van which took the family on many adventures and camping trips for the following 10+ years. The family returned to Boulder in 1969. In April 1971, the family adopted their 4th child, Julia Frances. Parenting Julia till her untimely death in 2015 was probably Mary Frances’ biggest life challenge.

In the late 1970’s, after years of searching, Mary Frances located her birthmother, Helen, who had passed away just a year prior. She quickly engaged Helen’s extended family, the Brazzells, and attended several Brazzell Family Reunions. In early 1990, Mary Frances was contacted by Tom Grant, who turned out to be her previously unknown-to-her half-brother. Tom and Mary Frances got together later that year and visited their shared mother’s grave in Wickenburg, Arizona. In the years that followed, Tom and Mary Frances became friends and visited each other several times until his death in 2022.

Mary Frances was a life-long member of the Catholic church attending St. Francis in Missoula, Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Thomas Aquinas in Boulder, migrating to the Lyons Catholic Community in the mid 2000’s.

Throughout her adult life, Mary Frances worked in Boulder as a bookkeeper, and in real estate. She always put her family’s and children’s needs first, ensuring that the four children never became latch-key kids. Mary Frances was an avid quilter and spent much of her free time sewing pieces of fabric together, only to cut them apart and sew them back together again. Over the years, Mary Frances made many quilts, and it gave her great joy to give them to the special people in her life.

Early in the 1970s, Mary Frances began volunteering at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless in the old RTD bus barn on Canyon Blvd, and she stayed involved with the shelter, now known as AllRoads, when it moved to its location on North Broadway. Mary Frances was a constant and reliable presence at the St. Thomas Food bank and other organizations in the area, including the Foothill Elementary library. She was unwavering in her dedication to volunteer work and generously supported charities for the less fortunate throughout her life.

Perhaps one of the most important facets of Mary Frances’ life was the summers spent on Finley Point of Flathead Lake in Montana. She started spending time there with her parents Pete and Mayme in 1937 and rarely if ever missed a summer at “the lake”. Throughout her early life, she spent a great deal of time at the lake with her nieces, nephew, and other extensions of the family. She shared her love of the lake with husband, Mike, and raised her kids to cherish time spent at the lake. She and Mike remodeled a boathouse in the 1970’s, which was built by her father Peter and his brother Paul Barthell years before, and later replaced it with a small cabin in the 1980’s. Mary Frances shared this cabin and the beauty of Flathead Lake generously with anyone and everyone who was willing to make the journey to northwest Montana. She got to know ALL of her neighbors and was a fixture in the seasonal Finley Point community. To say that being at the lake was her favorite thing in the whole world would be a magnificent understatement.

Besides family, Mary Frances had a lifelong love of dogs. She started at a young age with Checkers, a Boston Terrier, followed by long-lived Missy, a Dachshund-cross. Next came, Charlie, a small mixed breed something-or-other, Pinto the English Spaniel, followed by Walter, the Cocker Spaniel, and Joey, the mixed breed Terrier. It was Stevie the Shih tzu Maltese, who stayed by Mary Frances’ side during her last days. All of her dogs were adopted from the Humane Society.

Mary Frances will be remembered as a woman with strong convictions, a love of music, unwavering faith, and deep care for her family and friends. Her warmth, generosity, and spicy, indomitable spirit will be missed by all who knew her.

Mary Frances is survived by her husband of 64 years, Michael; her children, David Jones (Jennifer Carey), Kathryn Martinez (Jose), and Stephen Jones (Laurajean); and her seven grandchildren Alison, David, Karina, Eva, Jasmine, Marion and Garon. She was preceded in death by her daughter Julia Jones in November 2015.

A memorial service will be held for Mary Frances on October 4, 2024, at 11:00 am at Crist Mortuary in Boulder, Colorado. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to

Emergency Family Assistance Association

https://www.efaa.org/

575 Yarmouth Ave

Boulder, CO 80304

Tel: 303.442.3042

AllRoads

(formerly Boulder Shelter for the Homeless)

https://allroadsboco.org/ways-to-give

4869 N. Broadway

Boulder, CO 80304

303-442-4646

A memorial service for Mary will be held Friday, October 4, 2024 at 11:00 AM.