Junie Mae Whitlock died peacefully on July 28 at her home on West Babcock, where she had lived since 1993 when the street still had three vacant lots and a feed store. She came from Minnesota for a summer job at Bridger Bowl and stayed for the winter, then the next, then the thirty after that. She worked the cheese counter at the Co-op for twenty-eight years, remembering every customer’s preference for sharp versus mild cheddar long after the registers went digital.

She measured the town’s growth in rooflines. When she bought her cottage for what she called “a reasonable number,” the view from her kitchen window held the M and nothing else. Now it holds the M and fourteen condo buildings, three of which she could name the developers for because they bought Gouda from her on Tuesdays. She never complained. She just adjusted her curtains.

Her daughter, Kelsey, lives in Belgrade with two children and a commute that stretches longer each year. Her son, Marcus, lives in Missoula and visits when the schedule allows. Junie Mae leaves behind a recipe for rhubarb crisp that the Co-op deli still uses, a stack of trail maps annotated in pencil, and a habit of waving at every car on Babcock because “you never know who might need it.”

A celebration of life will be held at Hawthorne Memorial Chapel on August 16 at 2:00 p.m., followed by a potluck in the fellowship hall.