Patricia Jean McNamer

Patricia Jean McNamer of Missoula died Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, at St. Patrick Hospital of heart failure and its complications. She was 87.

She was born Oct. 21, 1926, in St. John's Hospital in Helena, the daughter of John E. Owen and Ella Jean (McMillan) Owen, and was educated at public schools in Butte, Billings and Great Falls. She graduated from Great Falls High School in 1944 and subsequently was employed as an illustrator at the San Fernando Valley Times in North Hollywood, as a receptionist at the Red Cross Field Office at Fort George Wright in Spokane, and at Pooh Corner Bookstore in Denver. She studied religious philosophy for a year at Loretto Heights College and, while there, was appointed Loretto Heights' delegate to the first organizational meeting of UNESCO in Denver.

In the summer of 1949, in Great Falls, friends arranged for her to meet Hugh F. McNamer, a decorated B-29 pilot who ran an oilfield service business up the road in Shelby. She and Hugh had a strenuous political argument and parted ways. Not long afterward, Pat drove to the Augusta rodeo and ran into the handsome Republican from the blind date. Three months later, on Oct. 15, 1949, they were married at St. Ann's Cathedral in Great Falls.

After a honeymoon trip by Jeep through Mexico, the couple settled in Shelby, then moved to Conrad, where they began to raise their family. She became deeply involved in library work and made two important friends: Ruth Longworth and Alma Jacobs, who both served terms as Montana State Librarian and were instrumental in expanding library services to rural areas of Montana. Jacobs, head librarian of the Great Falls Public Library from 1954-73, was also the first African-American president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association, and the first Montanan to serve on the Executive Board of the American Library Association.

In 1959, Pat was selected to attend, along with Jacobs, the American Library Association Convention in Washington D.C., where they stayed at the Mayflower Hotel and rode together at the back of the city bus.

Life in Conrad was marked by strong friendships with other young adventurers, including Rib and Pat Gustafson, Onno and Joyce Wieringa, and Julie and Dr. Bill Hadcock. Pat and Hugh were among the first guests at the new chalet on Big Mountain, and the family made innumerable four-hour trips across the prairie, through ground blizzards and up the mountain, in time to be skiing as soon as the lifts started.

In l960, the family moved from Conrad to Cut Bank. McNamer and Kalbfleisch kin were nearby in Shelby, and the Jack Murphy, Jack Moreen, and R.K. West families, among many others, formed a net of friendship and memories.

In 1969, at the age of 43, Pat decided to finish her college education. All five children and the family cat accompanied her to Bozeman, where she received a B.A. in English with high honors.

During the '60s and '70s, Hugh turned from the oilfield service business to cattle ranching on the Milk River, along the Rocky Mountain Front. Pat and Hugh shared an interest in, and respect for, Blackfeet history and culture, and were grateful to their reservation neighbors who helped them during those years. They also checked in frequently with Pat and Buzz Lutz over in East Glacier.

In l974, Pat and Hugh bought a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon north of John Day. They later sold that property and moved to Pendleton, Ore., and then to La Grande. During those years, Pat completed an M.S. degree in education from the University of Oregon.

She was employed by the Blue Mountain Community College Library in Pendleton during the late '70s and directed the Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council in La Grande from 1985 to 1990. She was one of the founders of the Fishtrap Writing Conference at Wallowa Lake, which continues today.

She and Hugh returned to Montana in 1990, and Pat was hired as executive director of the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra from 1990-94. In the mid-'90s, Pat and Hugh moved to Helena, where she was employed by the Montana State Retirement Division, while Hugh appraised rural properties, including the Alberta Bair Ranch. In 2004, they moved to Missoula, where their daughters live, and felt that they had, after many ventures and miles, come to be truly home.

Pat was an impassioned, inquisitive, lovely and loving woman who reveled in the written word, the arts, her family, and the muscular beauty of Montana. During the last year of her life she read scores of books, everything from "Heart of Matter" by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to Mary Jane Nealon's "Beautiful Unbroken." Much of her reading examined the turbulent war years that preceded her marriage and motherhood, the Cold War era that followed, and the global conflagrations that endanger our earth.

The Congressional Record for 1954 contains a letter Pat wrote to Senator Mike Mansfield in response to hydrogen bomb testing in the Pacific. He read it on the Senate floor, and wrote to her on April 7, 1954, stating "In my twelve years down here I believe that your letter has hit me with a greater impact than any I have ever received."

Patricia J. McNamer was fierce and sweet, funny and profound. She turned toward the mystery of death with a welcoming anticipation, as she had been studying it for some time. She wanted to be closer to the cosmos, knowing only the scantest details of what that might mean, and she understood that her not-knowing was the most intimate meaning of faith.

As a spiritual seeker, she critiqued her own beliefs – altering them when she found she must – and sustaining, her entire life, an absolute commitment to the idea that truth, love and beauty are inextricably intertwined, endlessly mysterious, and worth all the intelligence, verve, strength and imagination we can bring to them.

She knew heartbreak and loss, but had a valiant gift for celebration.

She was preceded in death by her husband Hugh in 2011 and her son Burke in 1985. She is survived by John and Alice Owen, her brother and sister-in-law, of Edmonds, Wash.; daughters, Deirdre McNamer, Kate Gadbow and Megan McNamer of Missoula; her son Hugh Joseph ("Joe") of Spokane; her sons-in-law, Bryan Di Salvatore, Daryl Gadbow and John Carter, of Missoula; her granddaughter Alison Gadbow (Jason McMackin) of Missoula; grandsons, Grady Gadbow of Portland, Patrick Carter of Newport Beach, Calif., and Willy Carter of Bozeman; her sister-in-law Elizabeth McNamer of Billings, and many nieces and nephews.

A small gathering for Pat's lovely neighbors in the Lynnwood Condominiums will be held in her memory shortly after the New Year. Her remains will be interred in June in Shelby, in a family plot facing the Sweetgrass Hills.

The family is very grateful to those who helped her negotiate this last part of her life, especially Drs. Maxwell, Knapp, Berry and Mays; Dr. Judy Visscher, Dr. Peter Tuberty; the care team of Partners Hospice; Anne Murphy and Tom King.

Instead of flowers, contributions are encouraged to the Poverello Center of Missoula, the Missoula Writing Collaborative, and the University of Montana Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections

Read Patricia McNamer's Obituary and Guestbook on www.missoulafuneralhomes.com.