Trudy (Gertrude) Zimmerman

Imagine...
At seventeen, hopping on a train in a small town in eastern Nebraska to go to school in Boulder...at sixty, traveling to Africa to use your nursing skills to help out at a hospital in war-torn Mozambique...at ninety-one, flying halfway around the world to spend three months at a "finca" in Spain enjoying family, friends, and great-grandchildren. Trudy was a brave, adventurous, talented, intelligent woman with the spirit, courage, caring, and heart of a true pioneer!
Born on a small farm in Cuming County, Nebraska to parents Leona and Fred Schilling. She was an only child, who loved her large extended family. She had only been out of her county twice before she hopped on that train and headed west toward Boulder to become a nurse. She loved telling her kids about her first night in Boulder, a scary basement room in the Boulderado Hotel, right next to a very noisy coal room. In Boulder, she met her husband Ron Zimmerman at the Methodist Church's Wesley Foundation campus ministry, starting what turned into a long and happy marriage with the two of them together for nearly seventy years.

After graduating from CU's nursing school at the School of Medicine in Denver, She moved to Walden, Colorado, and started their family with the birth of Marti. They loved Walden but Trudy longed to live in a larger town. In 1956 they moved to the new Denver suburb of Thornton and a life filled with an ever-growing family Marti, Kent, Paul, and Nancy. Besides her full family life, she also thrived in her nursing, enjoying a full profesional life of service and accomplishments highlighted by her years with the Tri-County Health Department. Her social and spiritual contentment was focused on the Northglenn United Methodist Church, and her happiness was in being a part of the Colorado she and Ron loved.

Trudy achingly endured the deaths of both her daughters from cancer, Marti in 2011 and Nancy in 2016, but loved watching her grandsons and granddaughters as they grew up to have their own eye-sparkling kids. Hundreds of individuals and organizations benefited from her generosity, and she loved nothing better than finding the middle ground between her liberal and conservative friends.
Hers was a long and rich life filled with joy at the table, underscored by the knowledge that heartbreak is better when cushioned by the comfort of others.
She will be missed by many but hers was a long and much blessed life that she shared warmly with so many.

There will be a celebration of life at the Northglenn United Methodist Church on Saturday, September 30th at 11:00 am. 

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