Community activist, political cartoonist and longtime Fraser Valley resident Marianne Klancke died in her sleep at home March 4, 2011. She was 58.

She leaves behind her devoted husband of nearly 40 years, river health advocate Kirk Klancke, as well as her two daughters, Carridy and Krista, and grandchildren Ellen and Mason.

The Jock and the Nerd

Marianne grew up in Prairie Valley, Kan., and started dating Kirk during their freshman year of high school, "which meant my mom would drive us to a movie and pick us up when it was over," Kirk said.

They dated through most of high school, even though Kirk was the captain of the football team and she was a star student and vice-president of the student body.

She used to say their relationship was "an experiment in cross-breeding between a jock and a nerd."

After high school, the couple headed in separate directions; she went to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he went to college in Pueblo.

Kirk discovered the Fraser Valley on a motorcycle ride the August before his freshman year. He turned up in the valley, freezing, and knocked on the door of Louise Kroneberger who lived next door to a family friend.

"She had a fire going in her wood stove in August," he said. "She fed me and thawed me out. And I decided that if I ever lived in the mountains I was moving here."

He came back the following summer, camping with some friends near Horseshoe Lake above the Fraser Experimental Forest. Hiking during that trip, Kirk had his first encounter with the impact of the Front Range's water removal projects: “We were walking along a raging creek and then there was a concrete structure and on the other side of that there was just a dry creek bed, and I thought, ‘This isn't right,'” he said.

Fighting to save the health of the Fraser and Colorado rivers with Trout Unlimited would become Kirk's lifelong passion.

But that summer he had something more pressing on his mind. He called Marianne, who couldn't afford to return to school in the fall, and suggested that they get married and move to Fraser.

Marianne, who hadn't seen Kirk in a year and had never lived in the mountains, agreed first to the move, joining Kirk in August. After some persistence on his part, she said yes to his proposal in October. They were both 19 years old when they married on Dec. 30, 1971.

Klanckes in Fraser

Kirk found work earning $2.25 per hour as a stone mason for Hans Eichler (now owner of the Gasthaus Eichler in Winter Park). Marianne started out waiting tables at Shelby's (where Randi's Irish Saloon is now) earning 50 cents per hour, plus tips. They had only one car between them and Marianne often had to hitchhike to work.

At a time when the Fraser community wasn't too welcoming to strangers, they immediately embraced the Klanckes, Kirk said: "The valley had as many loggers as skiers. All the skiers lived in Hideaway Park. The loggers lived in Fraser. They were hard-working, blue collar people."

Punk Murphy, who ran the library, took Marianne under her wing, and Marianne began doing children's story time.

The young couple never even considered leaving the Fraser Valley after that.

"They say if you make it five years here you will never be able to leave," Kirk said. "They say it's because you will be surrounded by people who care about you, but really it's because after living here for five years nobody can afford to leave."

There were 200 people living in Fraser when the Klanckes settled there.

"When Carridy was born, it was 201."

Kirk's parents moved to the Fraser Valley the year after the younger Klanckes, also becoming centerpieces in the community in their own right. They developed the original SilverCreek ski area and resort. Kirk's father and his business partner died in a plane crash in 1986. Marianne worked at the ski area running the season pass program until 1999.

The Klanckes'' second daughter was born in the middle of a December blizzard in 1975. Kirk had run his Jeep out of gas the day before and had to borrow a truck from his dad, causing delays.

Marianne nearly gave birth in Byers Canyon with Kirk screaming for her to hang on, and when the Klanckes arrived at the hospital in Kremmling, Kirk ran inside, grabbed a gurney, lifted Marianne onto it and rushed her inside.

A wide-eyed nurse, Krista, delivered the baby moments after Kirk came bursting back through the emergency room doors pushing the gurney with Marianne on it, and the Klanckes'' second daughter was named in honor of Nurse Krista.

"She has been the snow child of the family ever since," Kirk said.

Community leader

Marianne became the first woman elected to the Fraser Town Board in April 1980, according to town records, and was named Mayor Pro Tem in 1984.

"It was a bunch of good ole boys up until then," Kirk said. "They learned to live with her. Some actually learned to accept her."

She outlasted those who didn't. Marianne served for 16 years, until 1996 when the couple moved out of town.

Marianne took on causes for the community's children. When her fellow board members fought her idea to build a playground next to town hall, she applied for a $500 grant and built the original playground herself (with some help from Kirk) using old tires and a stack of treated logs and lumber to create climbing equipment of her own design.

She championed building the bike path between Fraser and Winter Park, a concept her colleagues also fought.

"If I want to go to Winter Park, I'll get in my truck and drive there," one said.

Marianne helped organize a haunted house every Halloween for many years, first in the gym of the old school and later, when the old school became town hall, continued the tradition. Teenagers who had nothing better to do than tip over the outhouses of old widows now had a productive project to invest their time in, helping design detailed haunted houses and then putting on a scary show for the younger kids.

When her daughters hit their teens, she opened a teen center in the old firehouse, constantly raising money to keep it going.

She also saw the need for an ice skating rink in the community. At first, she and Kirk flooded their backyard. When it became too popular among the neighborhood kids they began flooding the parking lot outside the old firehouse on Eisenhower and then moved the rink to the playground at the elementary school.

For more than a decade, they headed out late at night when temperatures dropped below 20 degrees to flood the rink with a fire hose. Marianne convinced Fraser Tubing Hill owner John Work to donate 150 ice skates to the cause so that she could outfit the school children with ice skates for recess.

Eventually the rec district took over the Klancke's ice rink project.

"And now to think that we have a $1 million ice rink in the valley,” Kirk said. “It makes me beam because it was Marianne's idea that we needed one here."

Marianne's latest project was as a board member for Grand County Advocates. She was in the process of renovating the advocate's new safe house shelter for victims of domestic violence, called the "Sprout House" with the help of volunteers and, of course, her husband Kirk.

"She was one room away from finishing it in time for the Grand Opening in April," Kirk said.

The family is hoping to raise enough money in Marianne's memory to finish the project.

Cartoonist

Around the same time that she was elected to town council, Marianne started drawing political cartoons for the Winter Park Manifest. Marianne continued drawing political cartoons for 30 years, refining her style and becoming more sophisticated with her political innuendoes over the years.

She always signed these cartoons using her maiden name "Corzine."

She saved every original and hung her favorites in a "Dirty Laundry" exhibit at the library about five years ago, using clothes pins and lines to display her work.

"She was creative in everything she did," Kirk said.

The last cartoon she ever drew was of a moving target on a wagon, reflecting issues with the current school budget crisis. It ran in the March 4 paper. She never got to see it in print.

Big hugs, bright colors

When the Klancke's daughters went off to college, Marianne did too. She drove back and forth to Denver more than 250 times to earn her degree in communications and was certified as a "Life Coach," one of her greatest passions.

Marianne almost always signed her correspondence "Big Hugs.”

"We feel like, with Marianne gone, there's going to be a bit of a deficit of big hugs in the Fraser Valley,” Kirk said. “We are encouraging people to fill that void," Kirk said.

Marianne also loved vibrant, bright colors. In her memory, friends are wearing yellow to her funeral Thursday, March 10. The service begins at 4 p.m. at the Church of Eternal Hills in Tabernash. A reception will follow at Crooked Creek Saloon.