Mary Aileen McGowan

Mary A. McGowan was born in Abilene,TX in 1936. Growing up, she was "Maryleen" to her family. The eldest of four, she and her family traveled to CO where she fell in love with the mountains, and vowed to someday live where she could see them every day. It also instilled a life long love of car travel that would lead her to see almost all of the Western US, except for the Pacific Northwest.

She attended Abilene Christian College where she studied accounting. She moved to Phoenix, then Albuquerque, and eventually to Gunnison, CO on the Western Slope. There she met a fellow from North Park whom she later married, Joe McGowan.

In 1968 she and her daughter Kelly settled in Littleton, near Bemis Library. Mary lived the rest of her life in that neighborhood, relishing her daily view of Mt. Evans and the Front Range.

Mary was a Broncos fan as early as 1970, and kept a notebook every year in which she charted scores, statistics, playoffs, and standings. She thought very highly of Craig Morton, John Elway, Gary Kubiak, Peyton Manning, and the other names on the Ring of Fame. She considered all of them friends, would have loved to invite them to supper, and spoke of them often, following their successes and failures as closely as she followed her daughter's and granddaughters', although she never got to meet any of the gentlemen personally.

Mary worked as a "full-charge" bookkeeper for decades. In those days, gentlemen were accountants, but ladies were bookkeepers. She successfully ran offices for geophysics engineers, equipment salesmen, 600 employee plumbing companies, and the Denver Board of Realtors. She worked for CPAs, doing the prep work they did not know how to do for taxes and payroll. She started with double entry ledgers and learned to use tape reels, Punch cards, main frames, DOS, and desktop computers. She taught more than one young programmer the basics of accounting so they could understand what she needed the computer to do.

A life long learner, she kept up with science, technology, and business to the last day.

Mary is survived by daughter Kelly (the late Jack Ross) and granddaughters Abbie and Audrey of Hallettsville TX; brother Jim Showalter (Lee Anna Kelly) of San Francisco CA; sister Judy Addy (the late Gene Addy) of Abilene TX; brother Bruce Showalter (Faye) of Abilene TX and cousins, nieces and nephews.

Donations are suggested to the National Parks Foundation, the Friends of the Littleton Library and Museum, or the charity of choice.
 

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Mary Aileen McGowan, please visit our floral store.