Albert Duane "Sharb" Sharbono

Albert Duane Sharbono “Sharb”, 76 of Missoula passed away peacefully and at his home, surrounded by family on the morning of February 24th after a courageous battle with cancer.
The second of four children, Duane was born December 6th 1941 in Savage Montana to Alva Jacob and Freda Eileen Sharbono. Duane and his family moved from Savage to Missoula in 1947. Duane attended Franklin and Jefferson Elementary and Missoula County High school prior to joining the U.S Army Reserve in 1959.
Duane met the love of his life Deanna Wing in 1960. In her words, she first saw Duane through a window decked in his Army service uniform and jokingly told her friend “ooh laa laa, that is what I want for Christmas”. As it turned out the two spent that, and 57 more wonderful Christmas’s together. Duane and Deanna were married March 4th of 1961, nine years later adopting their son Benjamin Duane Sharbono, December 22nd 1970. Six weeks old at the time, Duane and Deanna drove to Helena through a blinding blizzard that day to pick him up.
Duane truly valued and knew the meaning of a hard day’s work. He took tremendous pride in his work, and providing for his family. Duane was a logger, he started out hooking logs, and spent the better part of 49 years hauling them out of Missoula. His work included stints in the 1970’s and 80’s working in Alaska, hauling pipe for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Duane retired from hauling logs in 2006, but never did stop working, it was just too important.
Simply put, Duane just lived, he worked hard and he played hard. Beginning in 1969 and for the next 15 years, Duane raced stock cars with the old Garden City Speedway as his home track. Over the course of those 15 years he accumulated numerous track championships, a state title, and rooms full of trophies. He was as respected a race car driver as this state has had. The beautiful memories of Duane racing on that dusty old track will carry his son Ben, and the rest of his family for a lifetime.
Duane epitomized what it meant to be a Montana boy. He hunted, he fished, he hiked, and absolutely loved the Montana outdoors and the time he got to spend with friends and family as part of that. Particularly memorable were the mornings spent out duck hunting with Ben’s lab Nitro.
As important as work, the outdoors, and race car driving were to Duane, nothing compared to how he cherished his family and friends. Preceding Duane in death include his Mother Eileen, his father Alva, his brothers Alva Dean, Vern, Jimmy, Larry, his sisters Audrey, Donna, and Marlene, and two grandchildren Dallas and Dillon. Survivors include his loving wife Deanna, son Ben and his wife Tanya, Brother Ed and his wife Val, Brother Bobby and his wife Marcy, and Grandchildren Alisa, Jenna, Hayden and his girlfriend Macartney. In addition, Duane truly cherished and enjoyed the love of so many aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and good lifelong friends that it would be near impossible to try and list.
Duane’s philosophy in life, as in race car driving was “give it the onion”. It meant everything and anything you got…..and he did just that right up until his last day. He will be truly missed.