Mary was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1922. She was the youngest daughter of her father’s third marriage and much loved as the family tomboy. Her father had already retired, but was full of adventure stories from his days as captain of a big sailing vessel, the last clipper ship registered to Germany. A large painting of her father’s ship, lost during the war and recovered a few years ago at auction, hangs in Mary’s living room.
Mary attended the University of Berlin, studying languages as she planned to become a translator. She was fluent in French, English, Latin, and German and comfortable in ancient Greek.
The times before, during, and after the war were hard. It was difficult to know whom to trust, and Mary saw several of her Jewish and Catholic classmates and neighbors disappear. She was appalled at what was happening in her country, and carried her most valuable jewelry with her at all times just in case she had to flee. One day she decided it was too dangerous to go home and got on a train to Vienna instead. From there she was able to purchase passage to Persia (Iran). After many months in Persia, making friends and learning Farsi, she was successfully sponsored by her half sister, an American married to a CU medical school professor, to come to the United Mary Hix, of Mt Vernon Country Club, passed away April 29 at home. Her daughter Andy and her favorite caretakers were at her side. She was 89 years of age, the oldest proprietary member of MVCC.
States. It was 1948.
Once in Denver Mary worked as an x-ray technician at the CU medical center. There she met her future husband, Ivan Hix, a resident in Ophthalmology. He taught her to ski at Berthoud Pass and they fell in love. They were married in February 1953. Their daughter Andrea was born in November of that year and their son Conrad in 1955. In between children, Mary became a U.S. citizen.
Using savings from her x-ray technician job, Mary purchased a building site in Mount Vernon Country Club in 1955 and designed her house to maximize views of the continental divide from almost every room. She would live there for the next 57 years. For his part, Ivan paid the mortgage and built multiple stone walls on the steep property, some of them two stories tall.
An attractive woman, Mary loved glamour and elegance. As a young woman in Germany, she and her sister wound up on the cover of a German magazine. Later in the States she did some modeling for charities. But she also loved the outdoor life, helping Gudi Gaskill teach skiing on the local hill, grubbing in the dirt to raise flowers at the two MVCC gates, hiking and bouldering from her house down into Clear Creek Canyon. In the early sixties she and Ivan discovered rafting. Their first trip together was ten days down the Glen Canyon, the last season before it was flooded. Still wearing a neck brace from an earlier car accident and marshaling two small children, she reveled in exploring the unknown twists and turns of the river and hiking the side canyons. From then on it was a river trip every spring; the Yampa, Green, Gunnison, San Juan, Colorado, and middle fork of the Salmon among them. One trip, made in her later years, she and Ivan wound up two days into the canyon without enough water to float the raft. They were forced to cache all of their equipment, climb out of the canyon, hike across the desert to the highway, and hitch-hike back to the car. Ivan later reported that to his amazement, instead of complaining Mary coped with the situation like a trooper, taking every part of the challenge in stride.
Other adventures included a month in Haiti where Ivan worked as the chief physician and surgeon in the Port de Pays clinic, while Mary used her fluency in French to translate the patients’ complaints and histories for her husband. She focused her own healing efforts on animals, however. Over the years Mary nursed many orphaned newborn kittens to an adoptable age, worried over the local wildlife, and was a staunch supporter of the Humane Society.
Ivan died in 1998 and Conrad in 2004.
Mary is survived by her daughter Andrea Hix and son in law Brian Hollander of Olympia WA, two nieces Gabriella Burk and Marion Wendl of Munich Germany with their families, and a half niece Shirley Houghton of Portland Oregon with her three children Don, Eric and Leslie, and their families.
Mary will be remembered for her elegance and humor, her tenacity to life in Mt Vernon, her knowledge of history, language and culture, and her appreciation of art, music, and architecture.
A memorial service is planned for June 30 at Rockland Community Church.
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