Ivan Dale Loy, 62, of rural Fort Collins, Colo., died of an unexpected heart attack while working in the fields with his beloved goat herd on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022.
Ivan was born June 9, 1960 to Pearl (Price) Loy and Clyde Loy in Broken Bow, Neb.
Raised on the family farm, he attended a two-room school house in the nearby village of Berwyn before graduating from high school in Ansley in 1978.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in education (1982) from Kearney State College (now Univ. of Nebraska-Kearney), specializing in mathematics in which he was supremely gifted. Right out of college, he taught for a year in Lewellen before returning to work with his father on the family farm and taught Music and Math in the Ansley schools.
In 1993 he moved to Laramie, Wyo. to pursue a Master’s degree in math education at the University of Wyoming which he completed in 1998. After moving to Fort Collins in 1994, Ivan started teaching at Front Range Community College , Larimer Campus, where he spent the rest of his career, retiring in 2018.
It was shortly after he moved to Laramie, on Aug. 9, 1993, he met his life partner, Mark Lee. He discovered a new sense of self, love and community, and was embraced by the LGBTQ+ community. Over the years, many students looked to him for courage and inspiration in their own life struggles. Ivan and Mark had a religious, but not legal, “Holy Union” commitment ceremony in 1995 at Metropolitan Community Church Family in Christ, where Mark was the pastor.
Growing up, Ivan was part of Ansley Baptist Church, playing piano regularly for services. He also accompanied a traveling gospel quartet who performed for concerts and revivals through central Nebraska. In college he was part of the Roger Williams Foundation and Campus Crusade, and served on the state board of the Nebraska Baptists. Later he tended to follow Mark’s ministry calls, being a member of MCC Family in Christ, MCC Light of the Plains in Cheyenne, and Plymouth UCC in Ft Collins.
For the last five years Ivan returned to his roots and became deeply involved in the progressive American Baptist Church, Fort Collins.
Ivan was particularly passionate about teaching young people that others had overlooked or given up on. He could teach every class, but particularly enjoyed and excelled with the development courses, where he was able to inspire hope and accomplishment in students who had despaired of learning math. His tagline, “Math is fun!” was both joke and goal. Ivan exhibited a unique mix of teaching skill, interpersonal compassion, and patience with his students.
He was deeply involved in developing innovative instructional methods. He served as Vice President of COAID (Colorado Association of Developmental Education), helped coordinate state COAID conferences, and introduced those methods to his school. He received recognition for his significant contributions to the state of Colorado community college system as 2015 Faculty of the Year. Colleagues nominated him for Master Teacher at FRCC many times, and he was honored as Master Teacher of 2014-15.
After he bought a small acreage north of Fort Collins in 2000, he and Mark started raising Boer goats. What began as a couple of goats to keep the weeds down, became a business and passion of selling market goats for the 4-H programs. For a time they sold registered stock, but in recent years returned to commercial animals.
During the summers they took the herd to various places to do weed control, especially on leafy spurge. Many will remember seeing the herd at the old Fort Collins Water Plant on Overland Trail, and there are stories of escaped goats wandering through exurban neighborhoods. Ivan died while working on one of these weed control pastures.
Ivan loved sharing the goats with people; colleagues from school and friends from church would bring their kids and grandkids out to play with the goat kids. He was a skilled farmer and herdsman, but always mourned deeply when anything from a chicken to a llama was hurt or died. He loved every living thing, even replanting tomato thinnings that had sprouted too thickly into their own peat cell.
Ivan and Mark loved to travel. Over the years they backpacked in the Sierras, Big Horns and Wind River mountains and car-camped throughout Colorado. They enjoyed cruises in the Caribbean, central America, and particularly Alaska. They visited many western national parks, discovering the desert parks of Utah in just the last couple of years. There were trips to London, Paris, Australia and Canada; a long car exploration of Wales where he found artifacts and places from his mother’s Price ancestry; and a spiritually and politically profound pilgrimage to Palestine and Israel.
He is survived by his life partner the Rev. Dr. Mark Lee, his sister Lois Clay (Gary); and his nieces and nephews Michael Clay (Ashley, children Sebastian and Lincoln), Tammy Neel (Chris, children JoAnn and James), Derek Clay (Shelly, children Kolten and Bayler) and Brittany McDermott (Daniel, children Scott and Jackson). In addition, he leaves a great cloud of witnesses from the church communities he participated in, and multitudes of students and colleagues.
Cremation has been performed. A celebration of life will be held Saturday, Aug. 27 at 11 a.m. MDT at American Baptist Church in Fort Collins with the Rev. Kimberly Salico-Diehl officiating. It will be streamed on Zoom at: Meeting ID: 898 8204 7305 Passcode: ABC4JC.
Interment will be in the family plot at the village cemetery in Ansley on Sept. 3 at 11 a.m.
Memorial donations may be made in Ivan’s memory to the scholarship fund of the Ansley Spartan Foundation.
Please visit goesfuneralcare.com to share condolences.
