Sonya Ellingboe
July 9, 1930 – February 22, 2025
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. Memorial donations in Ellingboe’s name may be made to Historic Littleton Inc., P.O. Box 1004, Littleton, CO 80160; historiclittleton@gmail.com; or to the arts organization of the donor’s choice.
“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.”