Carol Higgins

Higgins, Carol E. HIGGINS, CAROL E., Passed away on Sunday, 25 May, after many years of courageous and erstwhile successful struggle against cancer. Born in December1931 she was her mother�s �Christmas Carol.� It was during the Great Depression and one of our beloved mother�s hardscrabble childhood joys was breeding and training tri-color collies. Her lifelong love of animals, which she shared with her younger surviving sister, Neil Evans, she conveyed to her four children, three of whom survive her: Leah Kim Higgins and husband Nathaniel Paul Tully; Bruce Higgins and wife Bonnie York Higgins of Flagstaff AZ; Mark Buckner Higgins with Tish Morris; two granddaughters Leila Higgins with Joe Fleishman, and Meira Higgins and husband Eric and their two children Connor and Caitlyn ---and everyone�s myriad dogs! Carol�s youngest child, Paula Higgins, then married to Jerry Kiuttu, pre-deceased her in July 2006, as did her husband Philip Buckner Higgins who died in 1993.As a beautiful and bright 17-year-old attending college chemistry class, Carol met Philip Higgins, with whom she eloped to begin family life in Pescadero, CA where Philip was hired to maintain costal radio towers. The young family eventually returned to Utah where Carol began raising their first two children while Phil resumed colligate engineering studies on the greatly appreciated GI Bill.On Christmas Eve, 1954, Carol, with her family of five now, crossed the Rio Grande to live in Albuquerque. Phil had begun crucial Cold War work out at the burgeoning Sandia Labs. For years while the family rose into the Middle Class and relocated to the Village of Corrales, Carol labored hard as a stay-at-home mother now raising four children. Eventually she resumed her studies at UNM, earning a BA in English, an MS in Sociology, and an MA in Counseling.Carol was an accomplished cruciverbalist, birder, hiker and gardener; either active in or giving generously at various times, to the: NM Mountain Club, Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, Planned Parenthood, Roadrunner Food Bank, and Animal Humane Society, among others. She read and travelled widely and had an artistic bent, evidenced in her drawings, paintings, ceramics and needlepoint works. She played accordion and piano, and loved Classical music. Tough when she needed to be, yet Carol loved people deeply and uniquely.We, her saddened survivors, will greatly miss our mother�s broad humor; her intelligence and worldly curiosity; her spiritual seeking; her tender sympathies for all creatures both domestic and wild. We will even miss her often myopic determination to secure herself materially and emotionally from some hard lessons of an often bleak childhood. We love you Mom; we love you Grandma. We remember. We will always remember . . . Those of you who may recall Carol and are so inclined, please donate, in lieu of flowers or other such, in Carol�s honor, to any of the aforementioned organizations. Daniels Family Funeral Services 7601 Wyoming Blvd NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 505-821-0010