Carol Ann Helen McClure

Carol Ann Helen McClure, Beloved Shawl Woman, "Swarm Queen," walked on last Saturday, September 12, 2020, at the age of 66. She passed away at Porter Adventist hospital due to a myocardial infarction. Carol was born to Dorothy Carolyn Waul McClure and Charles Grover McClure on June 14, 1954 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated in 1972. Carol was the first in her family to earn an advanced degree when she received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa in Writing and Rhetoric in 1982. Later in life she pursued a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Colorado Anschutz as part of a lifelong commitment to learning.

Carol was a renaissance woman whose life was filled with many careers, interests, and passion. She spent over a decade as a practicing lactation consultant, helping countless mothers and babies to breastfeed. She was also an antique book dealer, a beekeeper, an embroidery master, quilter, cook, baker, canner, gardener, seamstress, and much more. Carol was a member of the Denver Antiquarian Book Society, the Denver Antique Sewing Machine Club, a volunteer at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, the La Leche League of Denver, the Mile High Dachshund Rescue, and a member of the Denver Beekeepers. Most importantly Carol was a Mother. She is survived by her four children: Joseph Charles Brussel, Leo Anthony Brussel, Abdullah Al Daffaie, and Laura Mae Brussel. Additionally, she is survived by her cousin Sandy French, her daughter Jackie French Sacbibit, Jackie’s son Talex, Carol’s “little sister” Corrie Santos, and her best friend Kathleen Sexton. Carol was a Mother to anyone she met and never hesitated to take in new family members. Her expansive concept of kinship was not limited to blood relations. She was generous, rebellious, resourceful. She was always feeding people delicious pies, biscuits and gravy, sorrel soup, or one of her hundreds of homemade jams.

Carol was a proud enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and was deeply interested in genealogy and her family’s history, including her father’s experience in the Navy during WWII. She was also an avid student of aviation history, Choctaw and American Indian history, beekeeping and organic gardening, and women’s arts and crafts, especially the fiber arts such as knitting, spinning, and dying fibers. Carol was predeceased by her Mother, Dorothy McClure, her Father, Charles Grover McClure, her aunt and second Mother, Helen Waul Bixler, and her beloved grandmother, Margaret Porter Waul.

Her memorial service will be held at Olinger Chapel Hill in Centennial, Colorado on September 18, 2020. Her remains will be buried at Mount Lindo in Morrison, Colorado, overlooking the mountains.

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