Lillian Sanders

Lillian, 85, died peacefully in her sleep of old age shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 19, 2016. Born May 6, 1931, in Butte, “Babe” was the youngest of three. Her older brothers, Bob and Bill, served their country honorably in World War II on Naval warships in the South Pacific. Her father, Roy, served honorably in the U.S. Army in World War I as an aide to General John Pershing and was a member of the famed Baltic Society.

Raised in both Butte, and summers on a Kalispell ranch near the Stillwater River by her Aunt Hazel Spurzem, Lil learned the value of hard work from her Scottish-Irish relatives during the Great Depression. She learned how to “make do” with what nature provided and not complain.

She attended Catholic schools in Butte, St. John Evangelist and then Girls Central High School, from where she was graduated in 1949. After a brief stint in nursing school, she returned home to marry Charles Kaudy. They raised four children, David, 66, Linda Freeman, 65, Elizabeth Rust, 64 and Richard, 62. David and Linda live in Montana, Liz in Idaho and Rich in Denver.

Vital statistics alone do not tell the complete story of her courage and character. Raised in relative poverty and at age 6 having her mother dying, Lil had to navigate through hard times. Her father remarried to a nurse named Ruby, but then Ruby moved away after three years. By age 9, Lil was raised motherless.

Her aunt Hazel became her surrogate mother. She enabled Lil to spend summers on the Spurzem ranch outside Kalispell.

After their Butte marriage in 1949, she and Chuck began their family that grew from their four children to nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Always chatty, Lil developed close friendships including Patty G, Patty K, Helen and others. Lil knew no strangers, only friends she hadn’t yet met.

Summarizing an octogenarian’s life could fill pages. Lil went out of her way to make holidays and birthdays special. She baked scratch birthday cakes, carefully wrapping pennies, nickels, dimes with the rare quarter, in waxed paper among the layers for random joy to the lucky recipient. She made sacrifices to make sure all children had presents for birthdays and Christmas, even when this meant she went without. She struggled to make ends meet, but always had soothing words for her children when they also struggled, promising them that “everything will come out in the wash.”

When times got tough, and they were particularly harsh for her in the 1960s, Lil figured how to stretch the budget for food to accommodate Christmas by making favorite foods as gifts, such as a sack of potatoes for one of the kids, a gallon of ketchup for another, or a jar of crunchy peanut butter for another.

She hand-sewed clothing for her family because store-bought clothing cost more than she had. Hand-made coats and other garments were no chore for her as Lil ravaged St. Vincent de Paul for second hand clothing bargains. Lil could create practically anything following a pattern through her well-used pedal, and then electric, Singer sewing machine.

Lil taught frugality, having to stretch a one-pound package of hamburger to feed her family of six. During one particularly difficult time, when seemingly the only food available was a large sack of corn meal or potatoes, she devised ways to make those into three meals a day so her family would not go hungry.

When she needed to feed, clothe and warm her family, Lil began work outside the home for a local laundry. In the heat and steam, she pressed and sewed so she could bring home less than $70 a week.

Without her willingness to work, her family would have gone without. And when the laundry became too difficult, she found a new position as administrative assistant for a Model Cities program supervised by former Butte Mayor Mike Miccone and then Don Peoples, people she admired for their public service to the Butte community. She always had a soft spot for the poor and unfortunate.

A proud woman, she resisted, and refused, public assistance until a 1969 rollover crash permanently maimed her dominant right arm. Years of rehabilitation enabled her to recapture use of that limb.
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That one-car rollover enabled them to qualify for vocational rehabilitation from which they completed four-year college degrees and new careers. Always a people person, she studied anthropology and later dug dinosaur bones on famed sites where Jurassic Park was filmed.

She later moved to Missoula where she spent her reclining years, working part-time at Murdoch’s and other business where she could offer samples of products to shoppers and keep conversations flowing.

Lil loved cats, dating to her days at the ranch. She always fed strays and had many around her as company.

Per her wishes, Lil will be cremated with a ceremonial service planned for her birthday next May where her ashes will be interred in the Sanders family plot in Kalispell.

She lived her life as an example of courage and dignity in showing others how to persevere when the universe creates significant obstacles along the path. People who knew Lil got to love her, her spirit, her ability to have no unspoken thoughts in her efforts to have everyone in a good mood. Her family loves and misses her, leaving an uncharacteristic void in their lives they never expected from her loss.

By overcoming hardship, she led by example and showed everyone the virtue of hard work and determination in the face of long odds. She left us knowing her family loved her and that she was not alone. She will be missed.