By Sharon Sullivan

After earning a Master’s degree at Columbia University in New York City, Shirley Adams landed a job at the Eastman School of Music where she counseled female students for three years. A perk of the job was attending symphony concerts once a week.
“I was immersed in music – I had to be to talk to the kids,” Shirley said. “It was a wonderful experience.”
But Shirley had always yearned for Colorado. She got a taste of the West when she left NYC to work at a primitive Girl Scouts camp in the San Luis Valley for two summers.
Shirley had grown up in Wisconsin and after that first summer in Colorado friends from Wisconsin came to visit her out West. The group rode mules down the Grand Canyon.
“I’ll never forget Dot, my mule. She kept dragging behind,” Shirley said. The wrangler kept urging Shirley to dig her heels into the mule’s flanks. And when she did, “she kept turning around and putting her mouth over my toes,” Shirley said. “I was her first trip carrying a human.”

Shirley Adams

In 1952, Shirley left NYC for good when she was hired fulltime at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. There she counseled freshman women. “I ran the dorm of 200 freshman, giggly girls,” Shirley said.
It was at CSU where Shirley met Vernan Lee, who would become her husband two and a half months later. Vernon was a college maintenance foreman for the housing department.
Their first date was a drive to the mountains. Shirley loved the mountains. “He was a good choice,” she said.
They both wanted children; she was 32 and he was 45, so Shirley quit her job and they began having children immediately.
When the third child, a boy was 18 months old, Shirley returned to work as a first grade teacher – a job she’d done in Wisconsin years ago. She taught first grade in Fort Collins for 19 years.
The family liked to pile the kids in the car and go – mostly west -- to Rabbits Ears pass near Steamboat Springs.
“I learned how to fish with him. I learned how to hunt with him. He was a fellow you could turn out loose in the woods and he could find his way back,” Shirley said.
“But in Grand Junction, I had to do the driving. He’d get lost in city blocks.”
Always an independent woman, Shirley learned to drive at age 10. There were no school buses where she lived growing up in Wisconsin and so her mother had to learn to drive. One day her mother accidentally drove into a ditch.
“A horse and buggy pulled us out of the ditch,” Shirley said. “After that my father decided I needed to learn how to drive,” and she began taking driving lessons with him on Sundays.
Shirley and Vernan were living in Battlement Mesa when Vernon died 10 years ago. ‘”I’m not someone who sits around and twists my fingers. I had to find something to do,” Shirley said. So she visited the Parachute Senior Center.
“I offered to be on the board, and became the president after the first meeting,” Shirley said. She immediately discovered the center was spending too much on heating and cooling. She started writing grants, and solicited donations to buy a new heating and cooling unit for the center.
After four years as president of the Parachute Senior Center, Shirley began having back problems and in 2006, moved into an assisted living center in Battlement Mesa for a year before moving to Grand Junction to be nearer her daughter Peggy Utesch who lives in nearby Fruita.
Shirley now resides in an apartment at Hilltop’s Fountains assisted living community.
“It’s worked out beautifully,” Shirley said. “The advantage here, there’s enough people to intermingle with different people. There’s more activities, a van to go to different appointments.”
Shirley doesn’t sit still long at the Fountains either. She meets once a month with the Resident Council there, and she joined the Hospitality Committee to welcome new residents and tell them about the various services offered at the Fountains: such as massage, manicures and a beauty salon.
A bag of books sat outside Shirley’s apartment door Friday waiting to be picked up by the Mesa County Library, who will replace them with another selection of reading materials.
The Mesa County Library brings books to Fountains residents every two weeks.
Shirley also reads the newspaper, and a number of magazines: “Grand Valley Magazine,” “National Geographic,” “Discover,” “Orion,” “National Wildlife,” “Audubon,.” and “Archaeology.”
“I would love to be able to go on a dig,” Shirley said.
In Shirley’s apartment art hangs on the walls reflecting her love of the outdoors. There’s a framed photograph by an Indian paintbrush flower taken by her daughter Peggy. On the wall facing her bed is a large painting of a pasture of baled hay on a ranch near Ridgeway. Mt. Sneffels rises high in the background.
“That’s the one I like to wake up to,” Shirley said. “When the hay is stacked, it’s a moment for the rancher to take a few minutes, breath. To me its says ‘peace.’”