Ellen Virginia Fairbanks

Ellen Virginia Goodell Fairbanks passed away peacefully and on her own terms on Friday morning March 22, 2024 at Mountain Vista Senior Community in Wheat Ridge. Ellen made it to her 100th year, having had her 99th birthday on October 30, 2023. 

Ellen was born to Elizabeth (Hipple) and DeValson “Dod” Goodell in 1924 and is survived by her sister, Elizabeth Cabot of Dallas and her sons: Jeff Fairbanks and Glenn Fairbanks, her granddaughter, Tanya as well as many nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband and her sister Viola Yatzko. 

A trained cosmetologist, full-time military wife and mother, Ellen also spent time managing a rental complex in Florida. She was extremely well-traveled thanks to being married to Jesse Fairbanks an Air Force pilot who served during three wars. This union propelled Ellen from her small town roots to globe trotter. During that time it was Ellen’s job to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to move the family to the next base, sometimes stateside but as far away as France. Her sons remember attending as many as twenty schools before graduation from high school.

After his retirement from the Air Force, Jesse and Ellen continued their mobile lifestyle by wintering in Florida and Maine. Sadly, Ellen was widowed in 1981 but continued to drive, by herself, from Venice, Florida to David Pond, Maine for over thirty years in a row. There she spent the summers in the small backwoods cabin that she and Jesse built in 1974. When asked how she knew it was time to return to Florida her response was: “Until the snow or a moose comes down the camp road.” 

To quote her dear friend Evelyn: “We were a great team  and had so much fun together. We were probably opposite in a lot of ways and yet it never bothered us.  We enjoyed water aerobics for years as well as the luncheons afterwards and she is often mentioned here in Florida. My family referred to her as the lady that drove herself from Maine to Florida with her cat and her gun in the car. (Both true.) She was such an accomplished lady. She lived alone at the cabin in Maine and did everything from chopping wood to setting up the dock by herself.”   

Our friend Carol also described her perfectly: “Ellen was fierce, determined and lovely. She was such a character her own right. Truly, a quintessential product of her time - stoic, proper, self-contained and in her lucky case, remarkably clear thinking to the very end.”

We are grateful for the care Ellen received at Mountain Vista Senior Community as well as Health One Hospice.