Reuben LeRoy Roberts

Reuben LeRoy Roberts, 84, of 24 Eaton Ave., a former Minnesota resident and retired bait shop owner, died of a stroke Monday at a local hospital.
Services are 11 a.m. Saturday at Hillcrest Lawn Memorial Chapel. His ashes, along with his wife's, will be buried in White Rock, S.D., next summer. Schnider Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Survivors include sons Leonard Roberts, Dennis Roberts, Douglas Roberts, Craig Roberts and Tony Roberts, all of Great Falls; daughters January Roberts of Sand Point, Idaho, and Carol Roberts of Hugo, Minn.; 17 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
His wife of 64 years, Ethelyn, died in February 2007.
Reuben was born July 23, 1923, in Dundee, Minn. He worked on the family farm in southern Minnesota during his early years and loved to play baseball in his free time.
He married Ethelyn Clark on Nov. 4, 1942, in Wheaton, Minn.
During the early 1940s, he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps in northern Minnesota, and was a dairy farmer and bartender in the 1940s and 1950s in central Minnesota. From 1955 until 1959, he was a police officer in Morris, Minn.
He moved to Great Falls in 1960 and worked at the Anaconda Copper Co. until 1978. He co-owned and operated Roberts Bait Supply from 1974 until 1989. He and Ethelyn also owned and operated a country convenience store in Gibson Flats during that same time.
After that, he enjoyed retirement. During the past 15-20 years, much of his time was involved in restoring Tonka toys and old bicycles, as he never had a bike when he was a teenager, according to a 2003 Tribune article about his bicycle restoration. He bought $200 worth of books on antique bikes for research, and also corresponded with five bike clubs.
He eventually sold seven restored bicycles to a museum in Osceola, Wis. Although he enjoyed the restoration, it was sometimes tedious, and parting with the finished products was often difficult. For a change of pace, he began collecting Tonka toy trucks.
Among his many other hobbies were hunting, fishing and watching baseball and football. He loved to plant a garden every spring and harvest the vegetables each fall.
In addition to his wife, he was preceded in death by his parents, Wallace and Leona Roberts; and brothers Marvin and Ortney.
In lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to the Center for Mental Health Foundation, P.O. Box 1653, Great Falls, MT 59403.
Condolences may be posted online at www.schniderfuneralhome.com and/or www.gftribune.com/obituaries.