Elaine Catherine Massie

Elaine Catherine Massie, 72, of Denver, passed away February 20, 2017.

She was born September 4, 1944 in Waukegan, Illinois, the daughter of Casimir and Sophie (Paluckis) Walczak. She was a graduate of Holy Child High School and Xavier College in Chicago. On August 5, 1973 she married Stephen Massie, of Des Plaines, Illinois.

Elaine spent the majority of her life in service to others. As a teenager Elaine joined several of her Holy Child High School friends volunteering weekly at the USO of a large Navy base near her home in Waukegan, Illinois, helping young military men and women serving our country far from home.

At age 19, Elaine expressed her deep Catholic faith by entering a Convent of The Little Company of Mary Nursing Sisters Order lovingly called The Blue Nuns for the distinctive blue veil warn by the Sisters. Sister Andrea, as she was named, spent the next eight years of her life serving seriously ill patients in a hospital in Chicago.

During the years of changes in religious life, Elaine voluntarily left her Order and became a nurse in a locked psychiatric unit of a hospital in a Chicago suburb. There, she met, fell in love with, and married a young Chaplain named Steve Massie. Steve remembers being stunned by the deep spiritual center of Elaine's life and was profoundly spiritually blessed by the next 44 years of his life by Elaine's faith and service.

In a couple of years a baby named Nicholas was born into Elaine and Steve's life. Now 41 years old, Nicholas has shared again and again in words and deeds his gratitude for the extraordinary strength and devotion Elaine gave to Nicholas' life who called her "the most amazing mother, teacher, and friend he could ever have imagined." It was also the gift that led Nick to recognize his chosen love, Holly Nelson, and to bring into their lives Maren, now 11, and Sonja, now 8.

At one point in her life, Elaine was working full time in this large hospital creating and developing a process to identify addiction illness as a factor in the hospitalization of patients. She was looking after Steve and young "Nick," studying and completing her Masters in Business Administration and was a "soccer mom" and then a football mom for Nick and his teammates.

Based on her management skills and keen insight into addiction illness, her hospital asked her to move to Colorado to establish a brand new concept of addiction recovery for teenagers and young adults called Parkside Lodge in Denver. And away went the whole family in 1984 to live and work in Colorado which had been their dream destination since their honeymoon in 1973.

Over the next 30 years, Elaine continued to develop and refine her insight into a variety of related chemical addictions and illness, expressed her deep Catholic Christian faith, led Steve by love and example to become a Roman Catholic, and never let up on serving others and expressing her spiritual gratitude for her Heavenly Father and her Savior Jesus.

Elaine retired in 2013 after 16 1/2 years at Platte Valley Medical Center in Brighton, Colorado and was delighted and grateful for new opportunities to express her faith. It was almost as if the Holy Spirit led Elaine back to her earliest devotion to the heart of her life and faith.

In 2015, Elaine had surgery for a blocked intestine which had plagued her whole life and during the preparation for that emergency surgery it was discovered that Elaine had contracted lung cancer. Over the next 16 months she received wonderful care at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center Lung Cancer Clinic. Elaine was enabled to continue to express her deep faith, realize her life long spiritual center by a dream vacation pilgrimage to the Holy Land in Israel, and continue her life-long focus on Jesus as she helped to lead the Evangelization Committee of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Thornton and became part of the Amazing Parish Spiritual Renewal under the love and guidance of Father Tom Coyte and Bishop Jorge Rodriguez, and the ever gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit.

A life built on faith, family, and friends, continuous service led by her love for Jesus, never doubting the path laid out for her, Elaine quietly laid down her life in the loving embrace of nurses and doctors who, like herself, were and are living out their own focus on wellness, faith, family, and friends. Rest well, dear Elaine. The best is yet to be.

Elaine is survived by her husband, Stephen Massie; son, Nicholas (Holly) Massie; two sisters, Teresa McDermid and Susan (Terry) Yordt; brother, Fran (Janine) Walczak; and two grandchildren, Maren and Sonja Massie. She is preceded in death by her parents, Casimir and Sophie Walczak.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Denver Hospice, 501 S. Cherry Street, Denver, CO 80246 or The Denver Rescue Mission, P.O. Box 5206, Denver, CO 80217.

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