Dorothea “Dot” Hensley, 83, died peacefully on July 28, 2026, at her home on West Kagy, the same house her grandfather built in 1912 and the only one on the block that hasn’t been scraped for a duplex.

She worked thirty-two years at the Bozeman Public Library, where she knew every patron’s reading habits before they did and kept a mental ledger of overdue fines she never enforced. “Dot knew I’d return The Grapes of Wrath eventually,” said former patron Marvin Kelso of Belgrade. “She just waited.”

Dot remembered when the M Trail was a game trail and Main Street had a feed store, a hardware, and a diner where the pie cost thirty-five cents. She voted in every election since 1960, straight ticket for candidates who promised to keep the valley agricultural, then watched the hay fields fill with strip malls and the diner become a taproom with reclaimed barn wood tables.

She never sold the place, though developers sent letters weekly for the last decade. “The view of the Bridgers is still there if you stand on the porch and squint past the rooflines,” she told her granddaughter, Cora, who lives in a rental in Four Corners with three roommates and a dog named Biscuit.

Dot is survived by her daughter, Loretta of Livingston, and her grandson, Silas, who is currently looking for a two-bedroom under two thousand.

A graveside service will be held at Sunset Hills Cemetery on August 16 at 10 a.m., followed by coffee and those cinnamon rolls from the old bakery recipe at the VFW hall.