Emma Warren Obituary

Emma Josephine Warren departed this life peacefully in the wee hours of June 3, 2025. She celebrated her 95th birthday on September 21, 2024 with family and friends at Juniper Village Memory Care in Aurora, Colorado where she lived after her husband Charles L. "Chuck" Warren passed away in 2018. She was a favorite among the staff at Juniper and maintained her dignity, curiosity and good nature despite dimming sight, hearing and memory.
Emma Jo was the fourth of four children born to Dr. Frank Ernest "Jack" and Ruth Palmer of Sterling, Colorado, and was named after her two grandmothers: Emma Youngblood Palmer, and Mary Josephine Mitchel.
Jack and Ruth both moved to Colorado from different areas of Missouri to Colorado while still in their teens; Jack from the family farm along the Missouri River to Denver to live with an aunt and attend high school, and Ruth to Colorado Springs where her family moved due to her father's asthma from working in the families' wallpaper and paint store in Clinton, Missouri.
Jack moved to Denver in 1909 at age 15 where he went on to graduate from East High School, earn an engineering degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, graduate from medical school in Denver, and intern at Miners Hospital in Victor, Colorado.
Ruth's family moved to Colorado Springs in 1910 when she was 13 where she finished school and then went into nurses training at Bethel Hospital, despite being encouraged to pursue a career as an operatic soprano by her singing teacher. Ruth met Jack at Miners Hospital where she worked during the summer of 1916 to help combat a flu epidemic. They were married in 1917, lived at a logging camp in Wyoming where Jack practiced for a year, and then moved to Sterling, Colorado in 1918 where he practiced medicine until he retired in 1950. In 1922 he studied for a year in Vienna, Austria to be a specialist in eye, ear, nose and throat practice and surgery.
Emma Jo, her brother Frank Jr. and sisters Martha and Robin grew up in Sterling when it was a busy town of 3,000. It was the railroad junction for the Union Pacific and Burlington Railroad and the county seat of Logan County. Sterling was one of the earliest small towns in Colorado to have lines installed for telephones and electricity. "Doc", as Jack was now known, filled their house with the newest modern conveniences of the era; electric dishwasher, ironing mangle, washing machine, refrigerator, electric sewing machine, lawn mower, and bicycles. They had a grand sized player-piano that played both classical and popular tunes.
Ruth encouraged her children to learn to play a musical instrument, and Emma Jo took piano lessons until high school. She and her mother enjoyed many train rides to Denver for piano recitals, and the trip often included spending the night at the Brown Palace Hotel. Her parents instilled self-reliance in their children. Emma Jo recalled a time when she and her father went out into the countryside together where he helped her shoot a rabbit, skin and dress it, cook it over the fire they built, and then share the meal.
Doc built the families' first home on a corner across from a park with tennis courts of which the children took great advantage. He was a builder by nature, building two family homes and two apartment buildings in Sterling, as well as a much beloved cabin in the mountains of Estes Park in 1945. The family spent summers at the cabin, and they retreated there to escape the polio epidemic that ravaged Colorado in the early 50s.
E.J., as her friends knew her, graduated from Monticello College in Illinois with an associate's degree, and then attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. She met Chuck there and married upon his graduation. She returned to finish a bachelor's degree in Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver in the 70s after her children were grown.
Chuck and E.J. were married September 9, 1950, and settled in Denver where Chuck worked as an investment broker. The couple loved to ski, play tennis and bridge, attend sporting events, listen to and play music, share a glass of wine watching the evening news, and travel the world together. They enjoyed a wide circle of close friends, many of whom they met in college and with whom they shared the rest of their lives.
E.J. was an active member of the Junior League of Denver, acting in several Children's Theater productions. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, served on St. John's Cathedral flower guild and vestry, was an avid birdwatcher, and often finished the Sunday crossword puzzle.
Along with two friends, E.J. started and ran Tumbleweed Bookstore which operated in the 1980s. She kept the store's accounts and read the new arrivals so that she could help customers decide what they might enjoy. E.J. was a student of history and spent 10 years researching her family genealogy culminating in a book for family members and friends entitled A Story of Seven Women (her mother and 6 grandmothers) and Their Times- 1712-1990.
E.J. was an accomplished hostess for many elaborate gatherings of family and friends. Chuck and E.J. gathered annually at the Palmer cabin in Estes Park with their best friends where they "set the standard" for having great, good fun. Denver, during their lives, evolved from a quiet "cow town" into a vibrant urban cultural center. The couple were valued supporters of the arts and sciences and helped secure the vision of Denver's role as a cultural center in the country.
E.J.'s beauty and good nature were a source of happiness for everyone she befriended. She enjoyed fashion and she and Dorothy Dines were once enlisted by Nieman Marcus to model the latest fashion in suits - the photo appearing in the Denver Post. She always carried lipstick, saying, "I can't think straight without my lipstick". Rather than collecting, E.J. cultivated the ability to 'let things go'. She had a forgiving nature, and never held a grudge.
E.J and her late husband Chuck are survived by their three children and one grandchild.
A service will be held September 9th, 2025 at St. John's Cathedral in St. Martin's Chapel at 11:00am with a reception to follow. To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Emma, please visit our floral store.