Winifred “Winnie” O’Malley was born in the farmhouse on Jackrabbit Lane when it was still gravel and the nearest stoplight was an hour away. She died August 5 at her kitchen table with a crossword half-finished and the radio tuned to KBZM. She was eighty.

Winnie worked the counter at the Belgrade Co-op for forty-two years and knew every family by their grocery order. She fought the Planning Department three times over the shed behind her house — once in 1987, once in 2003, and once in 2019 — and won each time on a technicality she refused to explain. The shed still stands. So does the garden she planted from seeds her mother brought from Minnesota in a coffee can.

Her husband Frank died in 2011. Her daughter Sarah lives in Helena. Her grandson Tyler runs cattle outside Livingston and still called her for advice on fence lines. The view from her porch used to be open fields to the Bridgers. Now it’s rooflines and solar arrays. She stopped commenting on it around 2015.

She will be missed at the Tuesday night cribbage game.