Marilyn Reynolds

Marilyn Moore Reynolds died Dec. 12, 2019, at the Immanuel Lutheran Communities in Kalispell following a two-year illness with ALS.

She was born Sept. 14, 1935, in Kalispell to Dr. Thomas B. Moore and Miriam Moore and attended Flathead County High School where she was a member of National Honor Society. She graduated summa cum laude from Montana State Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and was a member of Delta Gamma sorority.

Growing up, Marilyn enjoyed hiking in Glacier Park with the Girl Scouts and swimming in Flathead Lake during summers spent at her family’s cabin and cherry orchard on the East Lake Shore. She and her sister Diane were a dancing duo and competed in the 1951 Horace Heidt Talent Show.

Marilyn married Leonard “Pete” Reynolds, a native of Missoula and a Navel Academy graduate, in 1958. As a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force, Pete was lost in a flight accident in 1964 at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Marilyn then moved to Berkeley, California, with her two young children, Tom and Laura.

She joined Chevron Research in Richmond, California, as research chemist from 1965 to 1967 followed by work as computer programmer/analyst for companies including for John Blume & Associates in San Francisco and Lawrence Berkeley Lab. She then had a 25-year career as manager of technical services with the Metro-politan Planning Comm-ission, a transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the San Francisco Bay Area. After retiring from MTC, Marilyn completed a UC Master Gardeners course in plant science and horticulture, and volunteered in Golden Gate Park and with the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco.

Marilyn married Vince Bacon in 1984. After his death in 1998, she married Bruce Harris in 2001, spending winters in Berkeley and summers in Kalispell where she enjoyed hiking and hosting dinner parties. Marilyn and Bruce moved permanently to Kalispell in 2017. Marilyn put her horticultural expertise to good use volunteering both in Glacier Park working with native plants and in the gardens of the Conrad Mansion in Kalispell.

She is survived by her son Thomas Reynolds of Livermore, California, daughter Laura Reynolds of Kalispell, grandson Lucas Reynolds of Livermore, and sister Suzanne Moore Crocker of Palo Alto, California.

Memorial services will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 10, 2020, in the auditorium at Buffalo Hill Funeral Home in Kalispell and on Feb. 1 at the First Unitarian Church, Berkeley, California.

Buffalo Hill Funeral Home in Kalispell is helping with arrangements.