"I love being a wife and mother. It is the most important thing in my life. Taking care of people and helping them is more satisfying than anything else I do." So says Danean Burke, Montview's Administrative Assistant to Ian Cummins, Clover Beal and Angela Cummins. But Danean is much more than this, so read on...
Danean was born in Denver and is a fourth generation Denverite. Three generations ago her maternal and paternal great-grandparents came from Yugoslavia with influences from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Scotland.
The youngest of five siblings, Danean is the baby of the bunch. She has three children of her own, all now in their 20s, and all of whom at one time or another have worked and/or volunteered at Montview. Stephanie (an HR professional with Livanova, a European manufacturer of medical devices) helped set up computer systems in the church, Katie (a professional nanny) has been involved with our youth groups and as a Sunday childcare worker, and Brandon (a paralegal student) has helped as a volunteer sexton. Danean does as much as she can to spoil her one grandson, 15 month old JJ. When she was 20, Danean married Jim, who is now a retired post office worker and runs his own company. She had her first child (Stephanie) when she was 24, then Katie when she was 28, and Brandon when she was 30. She has thoroughly loved her 32 years of marriage to Jim who, over the years, has also given service to Montview as a building and grounds volunteer.
After completing her K-12 schooling in Denver Public Schools, Danean moved way up the road to Fort Collins and CSU for college, where she started as a premed major preparatory to becoming a chiropractor. She had been accepted into the 1983 Fall class in a chiropractic school Chicago but, in the summer of 1983 before she left, she met Jim and, well, Jim won out. However, Jim did not stand in the way of Danean's earning an associate degree from Park College in Denver in business. Using her business skills, Danean worked part-time with companies owned by her brothers and for nine years ran a hot lunch program at St. Peter and Paul Catholic school in Wheatridge for 300 children a day. She was the manager and primary chef with one other employee and additional parent volunteers. This was a program she started after noticing how many of her children's classmates did not have a hot lunch. Additionally, she had a 20 year career as a floral designer. Danean still thinks there might be a possibility for service in chiropractic or massage therapy in the future, but that would be a second career, later on.
In April of 2004 Danean started her service to Montview, commuting from her home in Wheat Ridge. She was one of several new employees during a two-year period when Montview had several staff changes; in addition to Danean, Ian Cummins, Larry Strauss, Diane Cooper and Dan Gasser all joined the Montview staff during that period.
Danean is one of two administrative assistants at Montview (the other is Diane Cooper). Her primary duties are to support and resource Ian, Clover, and Angela, but she wears many hats at Montview. She is the wedding coordinator for the all the weddings held at Montview, she is the session coordinator and prepares the session packets for elders each month and assists Clover and the Clerk of Session in their preparations for monthly session meetings. She is also the building scheduler, working with the four permanent tenants in our facility and with the 400 to 450 individuals or groups who use our building throughout the year. And, when there are special dinners at Montview, you can often find Danean in the kitchen, cooking and coordinating.
It is the people, both the members and her colleagues on the staff, that cause Danean to say that she loves working at Montview. She says the staff is very much a family, all of whom support and love one another. She sees the congregation as a family who, when they have needs, can find an abundance of support and love from other members and the staff. The relationships between staff members, between congregational members, and between staff and congregational members are the strongest she has seen in any church. She constantly feels that the members with whom she comes into contact are genuinely interested in each other, as well as in her and her family -- "the care and concern for me and my family which the Montview family has shown us has deeply touched my heart". Danean has willingly accepted a motherly role for her fellow staff members, looking out for their best interest and supporting them, and says that she would do anything for any of the staff. She loves her coworkers and believes they have confidence in her. She wants everyone to feel that she will take care of them (that mother thing again!).
Definitely a "night" person, Danean loves crafts and painting in her evenings and days off. Not just painting walls, although she does do murals, but painting canvasses to hang on walls and painting clothing to wear. She loves to make Halloween costumes and has graced the Montview staff offices with various holiday goodies and crafted decorations.
Being a support person for the staff and the congregation of Montview is something for which Danean says she has been training for all her life. Her mother was a great mom to her and her brothers and Danean always wanted to grow up to be like her mother. Her childhood was spent in the family home in the Globeville area, around the mousetrap interchange of Interstates 25 and 70. Because she lived in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood when Denver Public Schools had a program to assimilate students into aspects of other cultures, Danean took Spanish throughout her school years. However, she says that, like so many things, "if we don't use it we lose it", and Danean no longer feels comfortably fluent, although she does understand a lot of Spanish speakers and would be able to visit in a Spanish-speaking country without using only hands and pointing to communicate.
Partly because of her warm and supported childhood days which were filled with precious moments by her family and neighbors, Danean now has an extensive collection of "Precious Moment" figurines, encompassing all the important events and relationships of her life.
While she was raising her family, they were her first love and most important activity. She adored being a mother and wife and now thoroughly enjoys being a grandmother. However, now that Jim has partially retired and the family is growing up, Danean has more time in which to indulge her love of travel. She and Jim have cruised and traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Italy, and San Francisco and the wine country, and look forward to experiencing more trips and, hopefully, a cruise to Alaska. At some point in the future, an "all inclusive" vacation in Mexico and a maybe even a trip to Ireland and Scotland to do a little family genealogy work might be in their plans.
Danean says she sometimes feels tedious - the "same old, same old" every day; but then she looks around and sees all the wonderful people in her life and all the wonderful things going on in which she is involved, and realizes that her life is very good, and not monotonous. She loves her family, her colleagues and her work. She doesn't feel the need to make any big personal statement, so she doesn't have any tattoos or body piercings (except two earlobes!).
Until she was about 40, Danean thought that she was an extrovert but, after four decades, she realized she isn't sure and questions being an introvert. She enjoys working alone or in a small group, and enjoys having the time to take pride in being exact. Those of us who know her might say, "Okay, you're an introvert, but a very vivacious one!" How else could we describe someone who is so active and so thoroughly involved in the life of her family and Montview?
Danean is committed to her family and friends, and especially to grandson JJ. You won't see Danean in the office on Monday mornings because she works from home and keeps an eye on JJ. Then the two of them spend Monday afternoon together at the Anchor Center School for the Blind. It's a special time for them both. Danean gets energy by seeing the world through JJ's eyes. "The world is pretty simple for him, he's fearless and I love to see how he takes it in and deals with it all."
When she is not working or helping others, Danean loves to read romance novels; Nicholas Sparks is her favorite author and she has read all his books. She also enjoys mysteries by James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell, and craft books and magazines. She enjoys walking and hiking in the Golden area and making crafts and gifts for her young nieces and nephews.
When asked if she has ever thought about writing a book herself, Danean says "not by myself but . . ." (It seems various members of the staff have kicked around the idea of having a ghostwriter write a book of 'church' stories, those anecdotal events that sometimes happen in the offices and life of the church, such as wedding stories, children's comments, shaky deadlines, etc. Danean is very reassuring when she says that all characters would be "fictional.")
Ever since she wrote a report on Eleanor Roosevelt for a 6th grade assignment, Danean has admired her. She believes in and adheres to Eleanor's positive outlook and view of the world and people. She always remembers that Eleanor said, "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" and, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". Danean says she realizes her own mother lived by this kind of philosophy and Danean tries daily to adhere to it herself.
When she is relaxing with her family, Danean enjoys watching television mysteries such as CSI, Blue Bloods, and How to Get Away with Murder (which was suggested by her paralegal-student son). Although she and Jim do not go out to movies very often, they recently saw "Inside Out" and thoroughly enjoyed it. Dee Cooper had seen it and talked about it and Danean says that she saw it with educated eyes after hearing Dee's perspective on it from a counselor's point of view. Danean loves old movies on TV with stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and any of the classic musicals. She is quite willing to watch by herself but, sometimes, good husband that he is, Jim will join her.
When asked if anything ever keeps her up at night, mother Danean says "my kids". She says that her children are God's children on loan to her, but she is in charge of them on earth; therefore she is always worrying about their health, care, and happiness. She says that sometimes her mind wanders into places where it shouldn't go and where she worries, but that she and Jim have raised good kids and she knows they will be fine. But mothers always worry, don't they?
With all the things on her plate, spontaneity is not a major issue for Danean. However, last year she and Jim took off for five days in Arizona where they enjoyed seeing a live performance of the "Book of Mormon" and doing stuff they don't ordinarily do, like watching the stars, listing to the sound of a running stream, and having the time to looking at the wonders of God's creation --from mountains to canyons.
If Danean heard that she might be marooned and out of contact with anyone else for a while, she said her love of walking would compel her to take a good pair of walking shoes, her love of reading would require her to take a good book of mysteries, and her love of mother nature would cause her to take a camera to capture the beauty that God created.
If she knew that she would be marooned on an island but could share it with anyone else from any time period, she says that, in addition to her husband Jim, she would love for her mom and dad to be there. She lost her dad when she was 16 and her mom three and a half years ago her. She cannot imagine being there without Jim and, since her parents, Dorothy and Emil, were such strong role models for her, she would love to have the chance to spend more time with them now. She would also love for Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Magdalene to be there Danean says that, with all of them "we would never run out of conversation or excitement."
One of Danean's secret desires is to be a personal shopper or an interior designer/stager, as she loves to help others and she believes her craft and design background would let her gather the right things together for her clients. She also loves to decorate and plan parties. When her children were in middle school, she planned and coordinated a cotillion night for their eighth grade classes -- a dress-up affair with individual introductions, a sit down meal, dancing with their parents, dancing with their classmates, and a "fun" show for relaxation and "job well done" at the end of the evening. In preparation for the evening, she saw to it that the students had classes on dress, etiquette, cutlery, respect, politeness, social interaction, making conversation, etc.
Danean has always loved to swim and was a lifeguard in high school. After much thought, she realized that one thing that she has never done but would like to do is to go snorkeling or scuba diving. Does anyone have tanks?
Danean says that most people don't know several things about her: that she loves Shakespeare (her favorite Shakespearean play is "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), that she love's live theater and college football, and that she truly cares for the staff and members of Montview. She says that when she first started her job here, she had no idea how invested she would become in Montview. For her, her work at Montview is enjoyable and can be so much fun that it is more like her "hobby" for the day.
So, you see, Danean wears many hats, both at Montview and elsewhere. It takes a lot of people to keep Montview running as smoothly as it does, week in and week out and, in no small way, one of those people is Danean Burke. Next time you see her, thank her for what she does for all of us!
