Felice Chronic Williams

March 1, 1953 - September 9, 2015

The Daily Sentinel

legacy.com.      

Felicie Jane Chronic Williams passed away peacefully at her home surrounded by loved ones after an extended battle with cancer. 
She was born, the second of four daughters, to geologists John and Halka Chronic in Boulder, Colorado.   

Felicie earned a Master of Science in Geology from the University of British Colombia in 1979.  This led to her minerals exploration work in Alaska where she met the love of her life, Mike Williams.  They married in 1982 and worked and traveled together before starting a family.  They had a daughter in 1986 and a son in 1991.  In 1992 Felicie moved her family to Grand Junction, Colorado.  

Felicie was a woman of many talents.  She built her own kitchen and porch and had a ceramics studio out of which she ran a small business. She played harp nightly and was always involved with her children’s lives.  Felicie also authored the second edition of The Roadside Geology of Colorado and The Roadside Geology of Utah guidebooks.    In between projects, Felicie kept the family traveling with road trips long and short.  

She was widowed suddenly in 2007.  Felicie continued to love her husband deeply.  She honored his memory by developing a series of educational signs that teach geology in Devil’s Canyon.  

Felicie will be remembered for her sense of humor, her strength, the depth of her kindness, how much she cared for her family, and how much she enjoyed life.  

She is survived by her children, Amber Rose and John Wesley, and her sisters, Emily Silver, Lucy Hinze, and Betsy Greslin.  

A party in her memory is being planned for Saturday, November 28, 2015.  For more information, contact amber.williams@outlook.com.  In lieu of flowers, donations may be earmarked to the Fruita Rotary Club - Mike and Felicie Williams Scholarship Fund, and mailed to the Western Colorado Community Foundation, P.O. Box 4334, Grand Junction, Colorado 81502. 

This story was recounted by Felicie’s daughter, Amber Williams and written by Mary
Sigley Brown.  

Felicie Chronic was given a French name, pronounced “fel’ issey.”  She was raised in Boulder by her geologist parents in their family of 4 daughters.  Studying piano as a child and then studying harp in college, her musical skills greatly enhanced the ambience of her home and was enjoyed daily by her husband and children. 

After completing her Masters in Geology, Felicie worked in exploration geology for “Houston Oil and Mineral,” employed by their Denver office.   Exploration geology entailed the determination of land value estimates based on the minerals existing on a given parcel of land.  During her assignment in Alaska, she met Michael Morgan Williams who performed the same duties for Houston Oil and Mineral.   After a courtship of several years, Felicie and Michael married in the backyard of the Chronic family home where Felicie grew up and where her parents were still living.    

The newlyweds quit their jobs, flew to Australia and purchased a VW Bug which provided them a full year’s transportation (1984-85) to meander their way throughout Australia.  They toured many mines along the way as they took in the magnificent coast lines and countryside and all that was scattered between.    

Felicie and Mike returned to Denver.  As working geologists they were not able to travel as freely and recreationally as they had become accustomed.   To remedy this disappointment, Mike decided to change careers and began working towards a teaching certificate in secondary science education.  Felicie became pregnant and their daughter, Amber, was born in Denver.  Felicie chose to devote herself to full-time motherhood.  Mike’s studies took them to Nebraska for a bit and then he landed his first teaching job as a middle school science teacher in Moses Lake, Washington.  In 1991, Felicie gave birth to their son, John, and immersed herself in homemaking and all the house repairs, both big and small.  After five years, they jointly decided they didn’t love their Washington location, so they moved to the geologically fascinating area known as Grand Junction, Colorado where Mike became employed as a high school science teacher in nearby Fruita, Colorado.  That location became their home base for the rest of their lives.  Felicie and Mike invested in rental properties in Grand Junction and Felicie managed those income-producing properties as a business to subsidize her full-time job as Mom. 

During their childrearing years, with all the glorious summers available for travel, Felicie and Mike purchased a 1989 VW van and took the children on very extended road trips, including round trips to Guatemala; to Fairbanks, Alaska (via the old Alaska Highway that followed the Alaska pipeline through Canada); and to numerous other camping adventures in California, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Montana, and Washington.  Frequently they set up camp for a couple of weeks on Bureau of Land Management areas, free to all Americans, where they joined up with family and friends.  One year they spent an entire summer driving the children through Europe.  

Over the school years, Felicie devoted her time to designing and building a playhouse for the children, designing and solely constructing a kitchen, installing wood flooring throughout their entire home, designing and solely constructing a screened-in porch,  creating a pottery business with a ceramic studio in their home, and painting in watercolors with her mother and 3 sisters.   Of her own volition, Felicie rewrote the Utah and Colorado roadside manuals, originally written by her geologist mother, and actually drove the routes to capture updated photographs, as well.  These updated road guides are still utilized to this day.   

In 2007 Felicie was widowed when Mike suffered a heart attack while on a field trip with his high school students in Arches National Park.  A scholarship fund, known as “Hikes for Mike” was founded by Felicie at Mike’s high school.  To honor Mike, she collaborated with a friend of Mike’s to create illustrated and informational signage along the Opal Hill Trail near the high school in Fruita where Mike taught.  

Ever resilient, widowhood brought new adventures.  Felicie continued raising her kids, went to Mexico with her friends, celebrated two years in a row at “The Burning Man” festival in the Nevada desert with her sister Emily, and purchased a share in a houseboat on Lake Powell for summer and fall vacations, inviting family and friends.   These lake gatherings continued until her death.  

Felicie fought breast cancer twice:  first in 2001; and recurring a full 12 years later in 2013.  Knowing that the second episode was terminal, Felicie bravely “fought for every inch of her life“ over the following two years.  She died peacefully with her children and all her sisters by her side in 2015.  Amber and John combined their parents’ ashes and scattered them over a lot of beautiful places where they had traveled as a family for so many years.    

Amber Williams shared the following remembrance:

“My parents were very happy with each other and their children.  They shared a lot of geology with us.  My mother did a fantastic job raising us to love science and art and to follow our passions . . . to do whatever we wanted to do.  She was a fantastic mother.   She did pretty good.  She liked to swim, hike, enjoy the outdoors, design and build structures, play the piano and harp, paint watercolors, and create, as well as teach, ceramics.   She laughed and joked a lot . . .  I could wax poetic about my mother for ages.”