Janis Mahony Obituary

Mahony
Janis Ann
(Metcalfe) Mahony
March 30, 1946
November 22, 2025

Janis Ann Metcalfe was born to Elmer Lee and Marguerite Elizabeth Metcalfe on March 30th, 1946. Her father was a war veteran who worked for the phone company for 40 years; her diminutive mother loved to read and play bridge. Together they suffered the loss of two daughters in their infancies.
Young Jan was tender and kind, with a quiet and fierce curiosity—characteristics that would become her life's signature. She loved sleepovers with friends, attention from her older brother, Dick, The Kingston Trio, and the piano—something she played with not only concert-level skill but startling emotional power.
She spent the entirety of her childhood in Denver, save for a brief sojourn to Billings, Montana, and attended Denver East High School near City Park, where she earned a scholarship from the Boettcher Foundation. Enabled to attend college anywhere in her beloved home state, she chose Colorado College at the foot of Pikes Peak.
There, her gentle company and generous humor won her many friends. She pledged Delta Gamma sorority and famously shepherded a musically-challenged gaggle of sisters through a live rendition of the Mamas and the Papas. It was on one of many walks across the campus quad that her good friend Judy Fonda mentioned she could picture her one day marrying Thomas "T" Mahony, a dashing young medical student with a passion for athletics and adventure. He noticed her, with her warmth and musical laugh, and the two were married the summer after she graduated magna cum laude with her BA in business and a minor in music.
Life as a Mahony was a stark departure from her unassuming upbringing. Soon came ski adventures to Ajax Mountain, long hikes in the Rockies, fishing and horseback rides in Clark, Colorado… Her marriage was a package deal for, along with her husband, she gained her lifelong best friend in T's sister, Gael. His medical education took them to Boston and later to Truth or Consequences, NM, where she worked as a bank teller to buy their first home. From there it was on to Salt Lake City, Downey, CA, Denver once more, and finally again to Colorado Springs for good.
It was there, in the Old North End, with the sheltering canopy of elm trees she loved so much, that she raised her three boys: Taylor, David, and Michael. She was honest and forthright with them, keen to get to know them not simply as her children but for the individuals they were. She reminded them on several occasions that she didn't "just love them," she "liked them, too." She kept the books for her husband's medical practice, fought for the preservation of Monument Valley Park, and returned to her love by accompanying the Childrens' Chorale on piano. With her family, she travelled to Europe, to Canada to helicopter ski, and to the Virgin Islands to sail not so much because she desired it but because, outnumbered by boys four to one, she was determined to keep up.
She was known to study Jung and the Kabbalah, to delight in the quaking of aspen leaves, to run her thumb gently across your hand as she held it, to notify you she was meditating with a sticky note on the door, to ascertain the precise day she was the same age as her mother when she died of a stroke, to collect slugs from the garden with a pair of chopsticks, and once to rescue her son's science project by retrieving a cow's brain from the garbage disposal. After one of two trees in the backyard fell ill and had to be removed, for weeks she took her morning crossword and cup of Folger's half-caf to accompany the remaining tree in its grief.
The leisurely retirement she and her husband always pictured was cut short by Parkinson's Disease and later Lewy Body Dementia, both of which she fought with the same courage and dogged persistence she brought to all of her adventures, chosen or unchosen, and later in life endured a move from her cherished Wood Avenue to Bend, Oregon.
She died on November 22nd, 2025–a crisp, clear Saturday morning with her boys at her side as they held her hands. She is survived by her adoring husband, her brother Dick, her sons Taylor, David, and Michael, their wives Michelle, Jennifer, and Anna, her five prized grandchildren (Kayleigh, Cal, Asher, Nora, and Rowan), as well as the tree in the backyard. A small celebration of life will take place this summer in Steamboat. In her honor, we ask you to savor a crossword puzzle, to pause to listen to the breeze through the trees, and to support your local piano teacher so they may give a free lesson to a deserving child.