When Tammie Tate had a task to do, she just plowed on until it was done.

Her daughter, Alysia Tate, remembered a day that symbolized that spirit.

"Mom decided we needed a tree in front of our house at 22nd and Fairfax Street, settling on a honeylocust," Alysia wrote in eulogy. "Hours later, as the hole approached the size of my body, I wondered when she'd quit. But to mom, planting a tree was just another thing to figure out, something I watched her do every day."

Tammie Tate died Nov. 14 of breast cancer, enduring the disease for 13 years. She was 67.

She was born Dec. 14, 1940, to Ernest and Ruth Jones Wood, in Kansas City, Mo., where she grew up.

Her family moved to Colorado Springs when Tate was in high school. She graduated from what is now Palmer High School in 1958.

She studied mass communications at the University of Denver, finishing with a master's degree.

She took a job at a television station in Michigan, where she was nominated for an Emmy for undercover reporting of mistreatment of patients in a state mental institution, checking herself in as a patient.

Then she moved back to Colorado.

She and George Tate married in 1971 in Aspen. They later divorced.

"Though nothing had prepared Mom for single motherhood, nothing seemed to stop her, either," Alysia said. "From rewiring lamps and making sure dinner was in the crockpot to arranging family vacations and managing a staff of reporters, she kept figuring it out."

She retired in 2005 from Jefferson County Public Library in Lakewood, where she was a marketing and public relations specialist.

She lived in Park Hill for about 20 years and moved to Aurora 10 years ago.

She was a reporter and editor with the Tulsa World and Aurora Sentinel.

"She was a devoted single mother," Alysia said.

She never missed one of her daughter's dance or piano recitals. And she budgeted carefully, so the two could take a yearly vacation.

Last year, Alysia took her mother to Hawaii on vacation.

"On the day we planted the tree, neither of us could have predicted the cancer that would ravage her body two decades later," Alysia said. "But it never, ever took her mind or her spirit. She stayed in her own home until the day before her death - bills paid and files organized, and not one of her many library books overdue."

When Alysia was caring for her, she was still as precise as when she was a reporter and editor, "instructing me on just how much ice she wanted in her glass of water and to be sure to take care of her plants," Alysia said. "She left this world as alert, sharp and tough as ever, my mom until the end."

And the honeylocust?

It "still towers in front of that house in Park Hill, sturdy and strong, just like Mom," Alysia said.

In addition to Alysia, of Chicago, she is survived by a brother and sister-in-law, Edward T. and Beth Wood, of Bandon, Ore.

Donations: Project Angel Heart, 4190 Garfield St., No. 5, Denver, CO 80216, or to a favorite public library.