Wallace “Wally” Tibbetts died July 22 at his kitchen table with a cup of coffee still warm beside him. He was 80. He came to the Gallatin Valley in 1989 with a U-Haul and a job at the MSU physical plant, back when you could throw a rock from Main Street and hit open field.

He measured his life in acres and irrigation ditches, first leasing pasture on Huffine Lane and later buying forty south of the interstate. The hay fields he cut every July are now a Target, a storage facility, and a subdivision called Meadowlark Crossing that has neither meadowlarks nor a crossing.

Wally fought the planning board for six years over a shed permit and then sold the corner parcel to the urgent care clinic because the offer was, in his words, “too stupid to turn down.” He drove a 1994 Ford F-250 with 340,000 miles and a bumper sticker that read NATIVE — a joke his daughter Janet, who lives in Belgrade, still does not find funny.

His son Marcus flies in from Portland next week. The view from the porch used to be the Bridgers; now it is rooflines and headlights.

The coffee was Folgers. He would not have wanted anything fancy.