Robert L "Bob" Deschamps Jr.

– The current Deschamps family patriarch Robert L. “Bob” Deschamps Jr., 94, passed away in Missoula on July 29, 2016. He is survived by his three living children and their spouses, Robert L. “Dusty” Deschamps III (Becky), Anita Lea Hetrick (Tom), and Amedee Marie Tieman (Ken). He is now reunited with his parents and his wife of 65 years, Dorothy (Ficke), who passed in 2008; his oldest daughter, Judith Anne Deschamps Bean, who succumbed to cancer in 2012; and his youngest son Randy, who passed away in a farming accident in 1961 when he was 11 years old. He is also survived by Judy’s husband, Harry Bean of Ronan. Bob has nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. All of his family love him and miss him greatly.

Bob, a fourth-generation Missoulian, was born in Missoula on April 20, 1922. He is the only child of Robert L. Deschamps Sr. and Della (Mix) Deschamps. Even though his parents moved to town when he was quite young, Bob preferred living on his grandparent’s ranch on Mullan Road where he attended grade school at the then rural one-room Hellgate Elementary where his grandfather Antonio Deschamps was chairman of the school board. In 1936, his parents built a house on Maurice Avenue on what was at that time an open prairie south of the University, and made an only partially successful effort to civilize Bob into a proper young city-dweller by enrolling him in St. Anthony Grade School and later Missoula County High School, where he graduated in 1941.

During the war years, Bob attended university classes at both Missoula and Bozeman, served as a pilot in the Navy Reserve, and took over operation of the family ranch. At the University of Montana, he met Dorothy and they were married March 21, 1944. They soon began raising their family, first on the Mullan Road ranch, and then in 1945 on a ranch at Marshall Grade. The Mullan Road ranch included the original Hellgate town site, which was still largely intact in the late 1940s when Bob offered to donate it to the City of Missoula to preserve. The city viewed such an endeavor to be a financial burden and declined the offer. Bob sold the ranch and the old buildings were razed by the new owner to make way for a trailer court.

Bob and Dorothy continued ranching on Marshall Grade where their family grew. Because ranching in Missoula was always a hit-and-miss financial proposition, throughout the 1950s and '60s, Bob made ends meet selling real estate in his parents’ business, Deschamps Realty. But Bob’s preference was always ranching and the outdoors, so most of Bob and Dorothy’s time and energy was devoted to the ranch and their children and their activities, including ranching chores, much camping, hunting, fishing, and touring Montana, as well as Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. Soon Bob was on the Bonner School Board, followed by service on the Missoula County High School Board in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This service piqued his interest in politics so he ran successfully to represent Missoula County in the Montana House of Representatives in 1964.

In the late 1960s Bob and Dorothy began selling the Marshall Grade ranch using the funds to purchase a ranch near Browning, where Bob fulfilled his lifelong ambition to have an operation with more than 1,000 mother cows. Soon they purchased another ranch near Ronan. Bob and Dorothy spent several years moving with the seasons between Browning, Ronan and Missoula, where Bob continued to be involved in the real estate business after his father’s death in 1968. His interest in politics continued as well, and in 1968 he unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives in Glacier County where he carried the reservation precincts but lost the vote in Cut Bank. Later, in the 1970s, he was appointed to the Montana Board of Livestock by Governor Schwinden.

Eventually Bob and Dorothy permanently settled in the Ronan area and began to wind down the ranching operation until they fully retired in the early 1990s, followed by years of travel, family history research, and following state and national politics. They spent summers on Flathead Lake and winters in Sun City West, Arizona. After Dorothy’s death, Bob continued this pattern until 2015 when he moved into the Beehive Homes in Missoula where he was a resident until his death.

We will all miss Bob’s brand of straight talk and his passion for life.

A funeral Mass followed by a reception/celebration of life will be held at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Missoula on Saturday, Aug. 20, at 11 a.m. The family suggests memorials to the Montana Council, Boy Scouts of America or a charity of your choice.