Marion Jene Hendrickson

Marion "Jene" Hendrickson, 89, of Livingston, Montana, currently residing in Bozeman, passed away Sunday, March 20th, 2016 at the Bozeman Lodge. A Memorial Funeral Service will be held 2:30 P.M., Tuesday, March 29, at the Franzen-Davis Chapel with Reverend Fredrick Amborn III as the Celebrant. Fellowship will follow the service at the Park County Seniors Center. Jene was born on July 19th, 1926, in Livingston, Montana. She was the only daughter of Arnold and Ruby (Vandevelde) Pergande of Wilsall in the Sedan Community. Jene grew up on the family farm and attended schools in Sedan through the 8th Grade, Wilsall as a Freshman and she spent the last three years in Bozeman at Gallatin County High School, where she graduated in 1944. She had bad knees that required numerous orthopedic surgeries that were performed in Billings when she was in Fourth Grade, Spokane and Rochester, MN. Following graduation she attended Montana State University for a year, studying art. She worked at Gallatin Laundry for a bit and then took a job with the Mountain States Telephone Company as a switchboard operator. She met the love of her life, Henry Arthur Hendrickson, at a dance class in Bozeman. Jene had taken the dance class at an earlier session but at this particular session, there were G.I.s that needed dance partners. Jene helped recruit the girls at the phone company switchboard to join the dance class as partners for the G.Is. On June 23rd 1951, Jene was united in marriage to Henry, at Hope Lutheran Church in Bozeman. Three years later this marriage was blessed with a son, Roger. They shared 65 years of marriage this coming June. Henry had been working for Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company as a lineman. Following the marriage Henry was promoted to Cable Splicer. The first job required them to move to Missoula, where Henry spliced the new telephone exchange into the system. They purchased an old single axle trailer house so they could move from town to town following the work. Jene stayed home to run the house and raise her son. Modern travel trailers are a vast improvement over their first trailer house. It was uninsulated, equipped with an ice box, a three-burner cook stove and a fuel oil heater. The siding was painted canvass as was the roof, but even with this lightweight method of construction, it was terribly heavy. It sunk into a former cesspool in Wolf Point and sank to the floor in sand at Plentywood. While parked at a trailer park in Sidney that was located next to a feedlot, odors from cattle feed made of sugar beet pulp made it impossible to draw a breath of fresh air inside the trailer. After a couple of years they were able to upgrade to a tandem axle Anderson trailer that had fiberglass insulation and forced-air heating. It was a real improvement. When Roger came along, they moved out of the trailer into a ranch style home in the Riverview subdivision of Great Falls. Henry was promoted to Foreman, a job he held until 1971, when the family moved to the ranch at Wilsall. Henry worked as Cable Splicer in the Bozeman and the Livingston Exchanges until he retired in 1981 after 30 years with the Phone Company. Jene was a supremely dedicated mother and was heavily involved in the community and in various crafts. She served as a leader in the Riverview 4-H Club and as a Cub Scout leader. She was a member of the Cascade County Home Demonstration Club and after moving to the ranch, she joined the Wilsall Extension Homemakers club, the Sedan Community Club, the Wilsall and Park County Senior Citizens Centers, and the Park County Historical Society. In 1990 they sold the ranch and moved to their home on Elm Lane in Livingston. In November of 2015 they moved to the Bozeman Lodge. Blessed be her memory. Jene is survived by her: Loving husband, Henry. Son, Roger Hendrickson and his wife, Lynne Carol of Bozeman. Grandchildren, Tara Hendrickson of Bozeman and Kallie Hendrickson of Brisbane, Australia. Other relatives and friends. Jene is preceded in death by her parents, Arnold and Ruby Pergande. Arrangements are under the care of Franzen-Davis Funeral Home and Crematory.