Sonya Joyce WATSON

1930 - 2025  (94 years)

• Name	Sonya Joyce WATSON
  Birth	9 Jul 1930	Columbus, Ohio
  Gender	Female
  Death	22 Feb 2025	Colorado
  Notes	Also called Sonja J Mattson, perhaps erroneously. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Watson of Aspinwall. In the 1951 Ames, Iowa, city directory, she was a librarian at ISC. She and John L lived at 565 Pammel Court. Her engagement to John Ellingboe was announced in the Pittsburgh newspaper in August of 1951. She was a senior at Carleton College at the time. Her address was 6179 S Elati Street, Littleton, Colorado. Sonya Ellingboe was still living in Littleton as of 2009 and was manager of Colorado Community Newspapers. An “about me” published in January of 2018 in coloradocommunitymedia: I was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1930. My mother was an art teacher and my dad taught economics. We moved to Pittsburgh, and my dad taught at the university there for the rest of his career. There was a lot of art in our lives. My mother would take me to museums, and my dad would bring me books. I met Jack Ellingboe in college, and we were married right after I graduated. I worked in a library until our son John was born. In 1956 we moved to Littleton so Jack could work at Marathon Oil. Back then, we said they paid salaries in scenery — you could make more money elsewhere, but it was just so beautiful here. We bought a home in Aberdeen Village. The streets weren’t paved yet — Ridge Road and County Line were still dirt. Jack served on city council, and we had four children together: John, Kirsten, Karen and Bruce. My life was pretty much feeding kids and schlepping them around. I still took time out to get a babysitter so I could go to the art museum, or I would take a class or something so I could talk to big people. We opened a book store called Bookhouse in 1970. Jack and I divorced in 1981, and I had to close the bookstore in 1986 because the big box stores were carrying the new best sellers for what I was paying wholesale. My friend Gretchen Peacock invited me to work at her new newspaper, the Littleton Times. I was like the office manager, but I started writing about the arts too. Sometimes we were up until 3 in the morning doing pasteup. The Healeys bought the paper in the early 1990s, and folded it into the Littleton Independent. Watching Littleton get more creative and encouraging the arts was what fired me up and still does. I remember suggesting to city council that we spend 1 percent of the budget on art, like Denver does, and they were absolutely horrified. I sat on the Fine Arts Committee at Bemis Library, and later helped start the Town Hall Arts Center. Hudson Gardens was another important thing for me. Evelyn and King Hudson were close personal friends of mine. Family is important to me, and so is making art accessible to as many people as possible. I feel my mission in writing stories isn’t to slam something, but to get people off their sofas to go see it. Littleton has changed so much, but I’ve been involved in much of it. I get nostalgic about old things that get overwhelmed, but I think we need to be changing and gaining. I hope I’m remembered as someone who encouraged people to participate in what pleases them. Getting involved in your community makes a huge difference in how your life proceeds. Be open to new ideas, even if you sense pretty fast you won’t agree. Keep listening. I’m not big on advice — I’ve been a joiner, and I recommend it. She retired from Colorado Community Media in the fall of 2023. From Colorado Community Media: Sonya Ellingboe, a longtime Littleton resident and beloved community activist widely known for her decades of writing about arts and culture in Colorado Community Media newspapers, died Feb. 22, 2025, at age 94. Ellingboe was born Sonya Joyce Watson on July 9, 1930, in Columbus, Ohio, to economics professor Jesse Paul Watson and art instructor Elizabeth Joyce Watson. The little family moved soon after to Pittsburgh, where Ellingboe grew up and began her love of art and reading, influenced by her parents and “a really super art teacher in high school,” as she recalled in a 2018 biographical interview with Colorado Community Media. Ellingboe got her bachelor’s degree in visual art from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she met St. Olaf College student John “Jack” Ellingboe. They married after she graduated from college and she then lived in Ames, Iowa while her husband got his doctorate in analytical chemistry at Iowa State University and the first of their children was born. The young couple wanted to live in Colorado, and Ellingboe recalled how a college connection helped her husband arrange an interview with Littleton’s Marathon Oil operation, where she said the company was “paying salaries in scenery.” They moved to Littleton in 1956 and lived there except for a couple of years at the Marathon home office in Ohio in the mid-1960s. They raised their four children in Littleton’s Aberdeen Village neighborhood before divorcing in 1981. “I had four children in six years, which can tell you pretty well what my life was like,” Ellingboe said of her time as a busy young mother, but from her earliest days in Littleton she began her community engagement by joining the League of Women Voters, going to museums and classes, and creating pottery in a local studio “to talk to big people. Ellingboe’s love of reading was a big part of her life, which she shared with others by working as a librarian in Iowa in the 1950s until her first child was born in 1955, and later by buying The Book House bookstore in Englewood’s Brookridge shopping center in 1970, then moving the store to a house on Littleton’s Curtice Street near Arapahoe Community College. “I moved it from Brookridge to an old house across from ACC, which had been a dream of mine from when we were in Ames, where there was a woman who had a bookstore in an old house,” she recalled. Ellingboe operated The Book House until competition from chain stores led her to close the business in 1986. With her lifelong love of books remaining strong, she then returned to work as a librarian, spending the next couple years with Jefferson County’s Columbine Library. In 1988, Ellingboe began her career as a writer, first for the Littleton Times and then the Littleton Independent and its sister papers in the Colorado Community Media chain. Her writing career lasted 35 years until her retirement at age 93 in September 2023. Even after health issues led her to retire, Ellingboe remained active in book clubs and kept a stack of books at hand to read along with The Denver Post, The New York Times and the Littleton Independent. She also continued to attend local artistic performances. Through her years in Littleton, Ellingboe was active in many community organizations and cultural amenities and played a founding role in some. They included the League of Women Voters, Bemis Library Fine Arts Committee, Town Hall Arts Center, Littleton Business Chamber, Commission on Human Rights, Littleton Fine Arts Guild, Hudson Gardens and Event Center, Friends of the Library and Museum, Littleton Garden Club and Historic Littleton Inc. “Most of the time we’ve been here I’ve been involved one way or another with something going on in Littleton … I get nostalgic about old things that get overwhelmed but I think we need to be changing and gaining,” Ellingboe recalled in the 2018 interview. “I’ve been a joiner, I guess,” she added with her signature bright laugh. “I recommend it.” Ellingboe’s career as an arts and culture writer was marked by the positivity and encouraging tone of her coverage. “Family is important to me, and so is making art accessible to as many people as possible,” she recalled. “I feel my mission in writing stories isn’t to slam something, but to get people off their sofas to go see it.” In December 2023, the Littleton City Council approved a Local Historic Landmark Designation for the house on Curtice Street where Ellingboe had her bookstore for many years, and in January 2024 the Littleton Arts and Culture Commission named Ellingboe as the first-ever recipient of the City of Littleton Arts and Culture Award, with a ceremony honoring her held in March 2024. This year, the Littleton Independent received funding from the city’s Arts and Culture Grant Program to support coverage of arts and culture in Littleton and the south metro area, in honor of Ellingboe. Ellingboe is survived by son John (Page Hartwell) Ellingboe, daughter Kirsten (Al) Orahood, daughter Karen (Peter Krasnoff) Ellingboe and son Bruce (Cindy) Ellingboe; half-sister Anne Redmond; four nephews; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. No public memorial service is planned, as family members note their gratitude for the many celebrations of Ellingboe’s life while she was alive. “I hope I’m remembered as someone who encouraged people to participate in what pleases them,” Ellingboe said in the 2018 interview. “Getting involved in your community makes a huge difference in how your life proceeds.” She added: “Keep moving — that’s my other advice — as long as possible.”
  Person ID	I143	Don Carlson's Tree
  Last Modified	13 Aug 2025

  
  

  Family	John Leverne ELLINGBOE, Jr,   b. 3 Nov 1929, Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota d. 31 Dec 2022, Sea Ranch, California (Age 93 years)
  Marriage	28 Jun 1952	Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
  	Heinz Memorial Chapel
  Divorce	1981
  Family ID	F1683	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	16 May 2019