Opal “Opie” Merritt, 81, of Four Corners, passed peacefully on July 18 at her kitchen table with a cup of tea gone cold beside her. She was born March 12, 1945, in the farmhouse her grandfather built on what is now the parking lot of a strip mall she never visited.

Opie worked the circulation desk at the Bozeman Public Library for thirty-two years, where she knew every patron’s reading habits before they did. She remembered when the M Trail was just a game trail and the Co-op was a grain elevator. She measured the valley’s growth not in population figures but in the number of headlights on the M at night.

Her children, Sarah of Belgrade and Tom of Livingston, learned to drive on the same gravel roads that are now four-lane arteries. Opie never complained about the change, though she stopped going downtown on Saturdays when the parking became a second job. She preferred the view from her porch, where the Bridgers still looked the same.

A celebration of life will be held at Dokken-Nelson Funeral Home on Saturday, July 26 at 2 p.m.