Melissa Jane was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. After living in South Plainfield, New Jersey and Naperville, Illinois, she arrived in Littleton, Colorado when she was six years old.
At that young age, she started skiing. Melissa always loved the outdoors. After graduating from Arapahoe High School, she spent the summer working on a dude ranch in Durango – one of 20 hired from over 500 applications from all over the world.
She attended Western State College in Gunnison Colorado where she would take off every winter semester to teach skiing at Mount Crested Butte and go to summer school.
She graduated with a BA in graphic arts and has a Masters in Psychology. She lived and worked in Crested Butte, and then moved to Summit County and worked for the Vail Daily News as a graphic artist.
She was a marathon runner and won the 1984 Summit County Marathon. Melissa competed in the Boulder-Boulder in the Elite 40 class, as well as the Mount Evans Hill Climb. She was an avid pack burro racer, mountain bike rider, and back-country downhill and cross country skier. She was a ski coach at Copper Mountain and other ski areas in Colorado for many years. There are 54 mountains in Colorado that are over 14,000 feet and she climbed many of them.
When Melissa moved to Denver she was one of the founders of the Denver Daily News. She also had her own graphic design business called Rio Designs.
One of her greatest joys was working at Wilmore-Davis Elementary School in Special Education. She cared greatly about the children she taught. She also worked at the Susan M. Duncan Family YMCA and enjoyed the Kinderkamps in the summer and during her holiday breaks. Melissa loved working with children.
Melissa truly loved her dog Bodie, her cat Henry (a female), her horses, Rio and Bailey, and her burro, Jake. She was very happy to know that they are all being loved and have good homes.
Melissa died peacefully her beautiful home in Broomfield. She is survived by her parents Tom and Sara Bloom, and James Clarkson.
In lieu of flowers a donation in memory of Melissa can be made to Colorado Horse Rescue, 10386 N. 65th, Longmont, CO 80503; 720-494-1414, www.chr.org or Collier Hospice Center-Lutheran Hospital, 3210 Lutheran Parkway, Wheat Ridge, CO 80023; 303-425-8000, www.lutheranmedicalcenter.org.
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