Harold ‘Hal’ Finch passed away peacefully on July 28, 2026, at his home on North 11th Avenue, the same house he purchased in October 1994 for what he described at every subsequent gathering as “a completely normal amount of money, honestly.”

Born in Great Falls on March 12, 1954, Hal arrived in Bozeman during the first great wave of people who would later insist they weren’t part of any wave. He worked thirty-two years at the county road department, retiring the year the first roundabout appeared on Durston, which he took as a personal referendum.

Hal is survived by his wife Darleen, who nodded along to the 1994 purchase price story roughly four thousand times; two sons, Tyler and Brad, who both live in Belgrade because “that’s where the math works,” as Hal put it; and four grandchildren who know the exact square footage of their grandfather’s lot by heart.

He measured the town’s transformation in rooflines creeping up the M Trail, in the Co-op parking lot expanding twice, in the way “downtown” became a category of restaurant rather than a place you went for hardware. “Used to be you could park anywhere,” he told the Belgrade News in 2019. “Now you need a strategy and a snack.”

A lifelong member of First Presbyterian, Hal served on the building committee for the fellowship hall addition, which took eleven years and three architects. He considered this his truest public service.

Services will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at the church, followed by a potluck in the hall he helped build. Darleen has requested that in lieu of flowers, attendees bring a casserole and a memory that doesn’t start with “back in ‘94.”