EVELYN M. NOCKLEBY
Evelyn M. Nockleby, 99, an English and music teacher and resident of the Kalispell area for 57 years, died Wednesday evening, July 13, 2016, in the loving care of family and staff of Buffalo Hill Terrace in Kalispell.
When she was born July 3, 1917, World War I had been going for 3 long years. Evelyn recalled that from 1912 to 1916, her family had lived in a homesteader’s tar-paper shack. In anticipation of Evelyn’s birth, her father built a 2-story house on the prairie. “In the winter time all of us slept in the downstairs bedroom, because there was no heat upstairs. There was a pot-bellied stove, and you’d toast your back side like bacon, and then turn around and toast your front,” she said.
The influenza epidemic following the end of World War I resulted in the closing of Cow Creek School nearest their ranch 20 miles north of Circle. The next-nearest school was in Hamblin, 8 miles away, and the kids couldn’t ride horses that far; so when Evelyn started school the family was living alternately on the ranch and in town.
They were living in Circle in 1922 when five-year-old Evelyn’s two-and-a-half-year old sister Thelma died, Evelyn lost much of her hearing from the scarlet fever epidemic that year, and to the end of her days Evelyn would remember the death of her sister with tears in her eyes.
Their house in Circle was located across a vacant lot from the church, and her brother Henry and Evelyn stood in the windows from which they could look over to the church. They could see the black Model T Fords and teams of horses and wagons waiting to take the funeral procession to the cemetery. After the funeral, her mother couldn’t bear to stay anymore in that house in Circle. So they closed the house in town and went out by bobsled drawn by horses to live with their father on the farm 20 miles north.
In 1931 the summer was so desperately dry the family had to harvest thistles for the cattle. In coulee bottoms melting snow provided the year’s only moisture, and deep green Russian thistles grew abundantly. To provide feed for the cattle during the coming winter, her father mowed, raked and stacked the green thistles as cattle feed. Later that year the government bought cows from the family for $15 a head.
After graduating from high school in 1935, Evelyn spent a year going to business college in Great Falls. Then Evelyn prevailed on her parents to let her follow her brother to college, and she then attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, from which she received a degree in English and music in 1940.
Evelyn took her first job teaching high school English and music at Outlook, Montana, from 1940-1941. She then followed a call and moved to Minneapolis where she took a job in the headquarters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. She also took classes for two quarters at the University of Minnesota.
Evelyn met her future husband, Ray Nockleby, on a bus travelling down to the Twin Cities after Thanksgiving from Fergus Falls where Evelyn had gone to visit relatives. The normally-taciturn Ray began a conversation with her and before the 120-mile bus ride was over had asked her for a date. Many years later Evelyn recalled her first impression of him was that he was “well dressed, and he had an honest face.”
Wages for church secretaries were low and Evelyn took a teaching job in Mullan, Idaho. But her new friend, Ray Nockleby, wrote letters to her often and they maintained active correspondence for two and a half years. Evelyn then came back to Minneapolis a second time and took piano and organ lessons from teachers including the organist at Central Lutheran Church. Evelyn made two recordings, one on the piano and one on the organ which the family played on our Magnavox many years later.
Evelyn and Ray were married in June of 1945 in Circle, and for the next three years farmed with Evelyn’s parents. Brian and Robert were born there.
In 1948, Ray and Evelyn left the homestead and moved to suburban Portland, Oregon, where Evelyn taught part-time as a high school teacher until she became pregnant with their third son, Donald. She would have two more sons after that, Paul and John.
Evelyn always said that her most important work – and greatest joy – lay in her children. She devoted herself to their welfare.
In 1959, Ray and Evelyn moved the family to the Helena Flats area near Kalispell where they owned and operated a family farm where the boys learned how things work.
In 1960 Evelyn was hired to teach at Evergreen where she remained as music and language arts teacher in the junior high school through the spring of 1981. This she did despite her lifelong hearing impairment.
In 1976, Evelyn and Ray sold the farm in Helena Flats and bought a smaller place in the country just north of Kalispell, where they lived 17 years.
Grandchildren began to appear beginning in the 1970s: Carol, Greg, and Jacqueline; Lisa and Jason; Harry IV and Tiena; Karla, Kristina, and Erik; Anna and Caroline. In 1993 Evelyn and Ray moved to Village Greens, and in 2001 they moved to Buffalo Hill Terrace.
Ray moved to Immanuel Lutheran Home in 2005, and for five years Evelyn walked every day across the street to see him and to play for him on the piano. She also played for services in the Buffalo Room.
In Oregon, they belonged to Milwaukee Lutheran Church. After moving to Kalispell, they joined Calvary Lutheran Church in Evergreen where Evelyn served as organist for many years. After moving to Buffalo Hill Terrace, they joined Northridge Lutheran.
Evelyn was a lifelong learner. As a young person she remembered reading every book in the McCone County Library. In the summer of 1964 she attended the University of Montana French Institute where she studied conversational French. She took up swimming as a senior, and at the age of 60 climbed Mount Aeneas east of Bigfork. In 1982 she travelled to Berkeley, California to become a trainer for Stephen Ministry.
Evelyn retired from teaching in 1981, and for 20 years she and Ray lived part-time as snowbirds in the Phoenix area. They enjoyed seeing Don in Arizona, as he had opened his psychology practice in Phoenix years earlier and was the first of many Nocklebys to locate there at least part of the year.
In retirement Evelyn knitted afghans and made quilts for her children and grandchildren. Some of these were entered in the Northwest Montana Fair.
In their retirement years, trips around the United States to visit their sons and their families were a source of joy for both Ray and Evelyn. Their first trip was taken by travel trailer in 1980 with Paul and Kathy that took them around the eastern United States for two graduations within two weeks, one for John from Harvard Law School and one for Brian from the University of Georgia Law School. They pulled a travel trailer for thousands of miles and stayed in many campgrounds, for example outside Washington DC in the Manassas Battlefield State Park.
After Paul and Kathy moved to New York City, Evelyn and Ray drove out to see them in their pickup, and Paul fondly remembers driving downtown with them to Battery Park to the very southernmost tip of Manhattan so as to gaze at the Statue of Liberty, which had greeted her immigrant mother in 1906 and her immigrant grandparents in 1880 and 1881.
Evelyn travelled with Pastor Leroy Elster to Israel and Greece, and with John and Lucie to Italy and Norway. One of her favorite photos was sitting on a stoop in Norway with granddaughter Anna, laughing uproariously at John’s antics behind the camera.
Evelyn maintained a vast correspondence throughout her life. Her letters to her parents from 1935-1966 survive as a record of her activities and values.
Her brother Henry preceded Evelyn in death, in 2001. Her beloved husband Raymond preceded her in death in 2010. Evelyn is survived by her sons, Brian (Belinda), in Silver Spring, Maryland; Robert (Kathy), in Lakeside and Phoenix; Donald (Jo Ann), in Austin, Texas, and Phoenix; Paul (Kathleen), in St. Paul, Minn.; and John (Lucie) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Santa Monica, California; and her grandchildren Carol, Greg, Jacqueline, Lisa, Jason, Harry IV, Tiena, Karla, Kristina, Erik, Anna and Caroline; and great-grandchildren Jeremy, Tim, Kimberly, McKenzie, Harry V, Bennett, Miller, Mason, and Sheridan. Evelyn is also survived by her brother Henry’s two children, David and Douglas (Susan), and their children, Samuel and William; and many nieces and nephews.
A service for Evelyn will be held at 11 am on Monday, July 18, at Northridge Lutheran Church in Kalispell, with viewing at the church beginning at 10 am.
Burial will be at Glacier Memorial Gardens where she will be interred next to her husband of nearly 65 years, Raymond Nockleby.
Memorials to Evelyn may be directed to The Gratuity Fund, Buffalo Hill Terrace, 40 Claremont Street, Kalispell, MT 59901; or to the Memorial Fund of Northridge Lutheran Church, 323 Northridge Drive, Kalispell, Montana 59901. to send a note of condolence to the family please visit www.buffalohillfh.com. Buffalo Hill Funeral Home is caring for the family.