Callie Ann Crapo

Callie Ann Burke was born March 13, 1926 in Marshall County, Kansas. She was the daughter of James G. and Daisy A. (Snook) Burke.
Callie’s dad died when she was three years old and she and her mom went to live with a family on a farm. Daisy had a job helping the farm wife with the cooking, cleaning and farm chores.
Some years later Daisy remarried and the family moved to a homestead ten miles west of Dove Creek, Colorado. Callie rode a horse or walked three miles to a one room school. She dropped out of school in the ninth grade to marry Stanley Crapo, a local sheepman. They had met at a community dance. They were married over seventy-four years, until Stanley’s death in 2019.
Stanley and Callie’s first home was a two room log cabin on Chico Creek in the spring and fall, a sheep wagon on Taylor Mesa in the summer and a teepee tent in Summit Canyon in the winter. Later Stanley built a one room house they lived in for several years until he could build a larger house.
The sheep were sold and Stanley worked at various jobs while Callie kept the house and helped where she could, be it feeding doggie calves, running to town for parts, watering the cows, hoeing or shocking beans, or whatever.
Callie taught herself to sew, with some help from a sister-in-law, and became a master at it. When her daughters were young, she made clothing and doll clothes. When the grandkids started arriving, she started making stuffed animals, many of which have been passed down to the next generation. Everything she made was perfection. The two-inch pillow in the doll house not only had a separate pillow case but there was lace on the edge of that pillow case.
Callie claimed she didn’t like to cook but the meals she made were always delicious. No one could make a pie crust like Callie. And whoever said they didn’t like rhubarb had never had a rhubarb pie made by Callie. The hundreds of jars of peaches, pears, tomatoes and green beans that Callie canned each year could have been featured in a magazine they were so pretty.
It was exciting when electricity finally came to Callie’s rural home. The first things bought were a freezer to preserve the deer Stanley killed each year and a clothes dryer so Callie no longer had to hang the wet clothes outside when it was snowing or blowing. Lights that came on with a flip of a switch were, also, much appreciated. Later came indoor plumbing with hot and cold water from a faucet instead of a bucket that had to be packed from the spring.
Calie’s life had many challenges and heart breaks but she met each adversity with grit and determination until finally her body wore out and she departed this life at age ninety-six years and five months, August 26, 2022.
Callie was proceeded in death by her parents; her husband; her daughter, Tammy Crapo; her grandson, Carl Cressler; her sister, Helen Freitag; and her brother, Dan Dalrymple. She is survived by her two daughters, Connie Faucette and Linda (David) Cressler; by seven grandchildren; twenty-three great-grand children and three great-great grandchildren.