Wilma Louise Brocklehurst (Willi) (1932-2025) was born in North Braddock, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1932. She passed away in dawn hours on Friday, February 7, 2025 after returning from a brief stay in Foothills Hospital. Willi’s beloved daughter, Cathy Lipton, sat with Willi in her last hours at Boulder’s Winding Trails Post Acute Senior Center. Willi was 92.
Willi and her third husband, John Brocklehurst, lived together for over 30 years, first in Boulder but the majority of time in Eldora, Colorado. They enjoyed walking trails, picnicking at Mount Evans, hosting parties around their Eldora cabin and on their deck next to the stream.
Willi and ‘Brock’ fed hummingbirds in summer and foxes in winter. She loved to cuddle her fluffy dogs, Kutya and later Maggie on her lap.
Willi used her artist talent to draw their holiday cards. Willi wrote notebooks of poetry and published her poems in the Eldora newspaper. Willi in her sixties also sang in intergenerational Boulder performances and in the Nederland Presbyterian Church Choir.
Willi has been a loving mother of two daughters and two grandchildren. She was gifted with many talents. As a younger woman, Willi worked as a London journalist. She was an award-winning poet and costume designer for community theaters in the Washington, DC area.
Willi was a long-time member of the British Embassy Players and Hexagon Players in Washington, DC. Also, she was a para-educator in Nederland Elementary School.
Willi will be remembered for her multiple gifts in writing, drawing, costume design, acting, singing, hospitality and zest for life.
Willi is preceded in death by her husbands, Bob Painter, Ray Garcia, and John ‘Brock’ Brocklehurst as well as her daughter Dianne Trickett. Willi is survived by her daughter, Cathy Lipton, son-in-law Roger Lipton, and grandsons, Blake Lipton, Eli Trickett and his wife Alicia Trickett, and great grandchildren, Noah, Owen and Addie Trickett.
Cards from mountain friends commemorating Willi would be welcomed at 20809 Clear Morning Court, Germantown, Maryland 20874. Willi designated donation of her body to the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine for training doctors, so there will be no funeral, but a celebration of life will be scheduled around Willi’s birthday on July 3, 2025.
Donations in memory of Willi can be made to the Eldora Land Preservation Fund.
The Eldora Snow Angel
Willi Louise Brocklehurst
Oh! You great, giddy, flurried white world!
How you glowingly intoxicate this poor poet’s soul!
I had no desire to welcome you at first.
I thought autumn was my favorite season.
Then—Oh, then—the magic of your glistening brightness,
And now—the pure joy of patterning a “snow angel”
In your sculpted white serenity—
With arms outstretched and flailing in a swirl of frozen delight!
Oh! All your wonderful things of this world,
I shall never know you fully—
Wonder will every separate us fondly as these hands,
Holding out this heart to you! These hands
That need never quite embrace you…
For what would fill them only leaves them doubly empty!
Hastily I must “paint” this never written poem as a radiant,
Silvery flow—a strip and pure breath of the element
In which the heavens are linked
And branch it clearly out across the sky—
Lest what still glows today soon be submerged
And lost in doubtful memory.
Will Louise Brocklehurst is a year-round resident of Eldora.
She wrote this as a tribute to “a magical place.”
