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Christopher Allen

Christopher M. "Topher" Allen, 35, of Champaign, Ill., died May 11, 2008, at Provena Covenant Medical Center, Urbana, Ill.

Services were held in Illinois. Burial and graveside services were held in Topeka.

Christopher, or "Topher" as he was known to friends and family, was born July 13, 1972, in Topeka, to John Allen and Rosetta Griffith Allen.

He graduated from Shawnee Heights High School in 1990. He received his bachelor in secondary education in English and journalism from Emporia State University in 1995. His first teaching job took him to Ankara, Turkey, for a year, and he then returned to ESU to pursue MA graduate work in English.

He married Lesley Sieger Allen Dec. 28, 1996, at Eastmoor United Methodist Church, Marion.

During the first years after their marriage, Christopher taught high school and college-level English and journalism courses and also worked as a freelance writer. He and Lesley then moved to Champaign, Ill., in 2001, and he soon after became employed at Volition, a video game production studio in Champaign. As a video game designer, Christopher had certainly attained his "dream job."

Christopher loved gaming of all sorts — playing cribbage with his mom, cards with his grandmother, or video games with his friends and co-workers. He was a newly-licensed motorcyclist and loved riding his bike. Christopher also was enjoying the new house where he and his wife resided since 2006.

Surviving are his wife, Lesley; his mother and step-father, Rosetta and Larry Baer of Topeka; his grandmother, Josephine Griffith of Topeka; his sister, Tina Azar of Naperville, Ill., and her husband, Qais, and their three children, Tibet, Zainah, and Zaide; his sister, Abigail Allen of Chicago, and her fiancé, Eric Peters, and their daughter, Valentine; his step-brother, Bret Baer of Topeka, and his wife, Stacia, and their two children, Jacob and Addyson; his step-brother, Scott Baer of Independence. Also surviving are his parents-in-law, Harry "Skip" and Eileen Sieger of Marion, who loved him as their own son.

He was preceded in death by his grandfather, Chauncey Griffith. Christopher was one of 12 grandchildren, and he had many aunts and uncles who loved him.

Memorials may be made to a local humane society or Make-a-Wish Foundation.

— paid obituary

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