“See you in the trees” was how longtime Rico resident Peter Turner Carter, 61, who considered the outdoors his “church,” said goodbye. Carter died in January…. Norwood resident Patricia Jean Vigil, a committed discalceate, died March 9, survived by her husband of 28 years, Jim Spor, of Olathe, her parents, Joe and Eunice Vigil, of Montrose, her three children and six grandchildren. Services were held out-of-doors, beneath the pavilion at the First Baptist Church of Delta; shoes were optional…. Lifelong San Miguel County resident Gary Latham, 52, died on March 10 from heart failure at his residence at the Norwood Inn. Born to Raymond and Carol Sue (Robb) Latham in Uravan, in 1956, he grew up on the family ranch in Bedrock, an only child, who grew up to enjoy his sons, guns, hunting and shooting the breeze with friends. He was an avid horseman, respected ranch-hand, ferrier and a member of the Abundant Life Church in Norwood. Graveside funeral services were held at the Paradox Cemetery. …Ridgway resident Alan Barry Riley, owner of the Garden Goddess Tea House, Harley rider and fire fighter extraordinaire, died March 26, surrounded by his wife, Jennifer, and their son, Quinn, and close friends…. Lifelong Telluride resident Perina Ranta died March 27, at home. Born Perina Bonato, in 1921, to Sebastian and Mary Anna Bonato (nee Tosca), immigrants from Bassano del Grappa, Italy, she lived at the Smuggler Mine, in old Ophir, and later in Telluride, graduating from Telluride High School. After World War II, Perina married fellow Tellurider Elmer Ranta, the son of Finish immigrants. Their children – daughter, Vicki, born in 1949, and son, Allan, born in 1952 – remain in Telluride, with their families…. Telluride Academy instructor Daniel James White, 36, died in a car accident on April 11. The popular instructor was born in 1973, in Muskegon, Mich.; teaching and sports were driving forces in White’s life. White, who loved the outdoors and places of natural beauty, extended the gift of life to more than 50 people, through tissue and organ donations…. Priscilla Duffield, who worked as the executive assistant to J. Robert Oppenheimer in the heyday of the top-secret Los Alamos Project that created the world’s first-ever atomic bomb, died in July at age 91 at her Norwood home. Born in 1918 in Berkeley, Calif., Duffield was executive assistant to the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, during and after World War II. …Ophir resident Captain Jack Carey, 64, was killed in a bicycling accident on July 15. In September, the Telluride Ski Co. named a ski run after Carey, known to many as the Ambassador of Skiing. Jack was an avid athlete and skier, showing up hours before the lifts opened on powder days, and chasing face shots with those much younger than his 64 years for more than three decades. On Sept.11, 2009, Carey would have celebrated his 65th birthday. “Jack played hard, but he also relished hard work, outside and in the trees. This unique opportunity will enable some of us to honor that work ethic in a spirit of collaboration with the ski area,” said his wife, Monica…. Flyfishing guide Hilary Fitzgerald died in a car accident in Paonia Aug. 21, when a 17-year-old girl driving a Pontiac Grand Am struck the van she was riding in. Fitzgerald, who was thrown from the vehicle as it rolled, was – uncharacteristically – not wearing her seatbelt. “Hill put down four lifetimes worth of miles in her 29 years,” said sister Sarah Fitzgerald, noting her sister’s worldly travels to places like Africa, India, South, and Central America, Mexico, Nepal, and Southest Asia. … “A dollar and a half, again – it’s the chair rent that gets me,” was Ouray resident Dick Fowler’s signature signoff at his favorite hangout, the Buen Tiempo Restaurant, in Ouray. Fowler, 67, was such a fixture that his barstool received a plaque honoring his 60th birthday. “Dick was a favorite regular at the Buen Tiempo. He never demanded a thing. It was our pleasure to serve him and our privilege to know him. He will be missed forever,” the staff at Buen Tiempo wrote in a letter to The Watch. …The body of missing Montrose man Thomas J. Boylan, 82, was found in a one-vehicle wreck down a steep embankment near Red Mountain Pass on Nov. 5, roughly two weeks after his family reported him missing. Officers said he “failed to negotiate a left side curve and ran off the right side of the roadway and began a roll down the steep embankment.”…Telluride lost one-of-a-kind with the Thursday, Oct. 22 death of longtime resident Stephen L. Wald, 74. Wald, who died peacefully at his home in Aldasoro, from Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, was an avid athlete, traveler and philanthropist. He spent his career in the investment management business, primarily as a as managing partner with Reich and Tang in New York. Upon his retirement, Wald was selected by the U.S. government to head up the Czech and Slovak American Enterprise Fund, after the Iron Curtain came down, by stimulating the economy in Eastern Europe, which he succeeded in doing, brilliantly. A typical telephone conversation with Wald went like this, his longtime tennis buddy Richard Betts told the SRO crowd at the Telluride Celebration of Wald’s life held Monday, Dec. 28.

“Stephen welcome back from your trip to the Himalayas. Weren’t you with that doctor that you sponsored to help with that inexpensive cataract surgery for the mountain people? How did it go?”

“Richard you wouldn’t have believed it. Blind people walked as far as a hundred miles because they heard of this miraculous surgery. It was the most touching thing I have ever encountered. Women that had been blind for 30 or 40 years were made to see. It made me cry. In fact I am crying now just thinking of it.” And then came his traditional signoff: “I will speak with you.” Click.

Wald is survived by his wife, Sheila, and by his children, Alison Wald and Alex Seitz Wald; his oldest son, John, died in an avalanche in 1996….Former Telluride resident Rebecca Hernandez Glenn died Thursday, Dec. 17, in Calif., seven years after her diagnosis with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). She is survived by her husband, Scott Glenn, and their children, Connor and Ashley, and by her stepsons Jaime and Russell Glenn. A service celebrating her life takes place Sunday, Jan. 3, at 11:30 a.m. at Telluride Christ Presbyterian Church, followed by a luncheon at the Glenn house.

Longtime Telluride resident Mark L. Greenberg, 59, died at home on Feb. 15; survivors include his mother, Eleanor; sister, Janet Spier; and cousin, Jerry Greene of Telluride. …We suspect more than a few Watch readers were surprised, upon reading of the death in early November of beloved columnist Grace Herndon, to discover she was 85 years old. Herndon packed several lifetimes into one, beginning with her birth into a politically active family that moved from Milwaukee, Wisc. to Chicago, Ill., while she was still a child. After a stint at Colorado College, Grace became a ranch wife and a journalist, whose byline appeared everywhere from the Reader’s Digest to the Denver Post to the Watch, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Telluride Times, and the San Miguel Mountain Journal. A fearless champion of liberal and environmental causes, she took on everything from the power companies to the uranium mining industry, wafer-board mills, out of control land development and the logging industry. “Damn, we’ll really miss her,” wrote Grace’s family, after her death; survivors include her husband, Steve; her son, John and his wife Lory; her daughter, Kary, and “a passel of environmentalist grandchildren scattered across the country watching out for the gifts of Mother Nature.”