Olive WILKINS

Olive Wilkins of Spokane, Washington, died Friday, August 15, at the age of 85. She was surrounded by her children and grandchildren, and though we mourn mightily, we rejoice, too, that after all this time she is with her beloved, her Walt.

Born in Billings in 1940, Olive grew up in the small towns and on the prairies of eastern Montana. Her father ran grain elevators, and her mother kept her and her three younger brothers in line. In 1955, after scrimping and saving for years, the family settled near the tiny town of Melstone, on a ranch of their own. That wide-open, wind-swept country - the ranch on Willow Creek and the farmland north of the Musselshell River - became her heart's home.

Olive inherited from her cowboy father a love of landscape and story, and from her Irish mother an iron will and a love of books. Olive could ride and fix fence and work sheep, and she graduated first in her class at Melstone High School and enrolled at Holy Names College in Spokane, Washington. She took a Milwaukee Road train from Melstone to Spokane, was named the May Queen, and graduated with a degree in education in three years. She subsequently worked with native communities in Alaska and as a social worker and educator in Miles City and Billings. Though the work she'd chosen was hard and tiring, she loved it and excelled at it; she felt truly the call of Christ to listen and witness and help. Her kindness and abiding empathy, those were all her own.

Visiting her brother in Missoula one weekend, Olive risked a date with a friend of his, a man just out of the Army and working on his forestry degree. They had dinner and saw a movie. He was Southern; he wore sideburns and a mustache. She thought him handsome and courteous. His first letter arrived not long after she got back to Billings. Dancing, he wrote-he'd like to take her dancing. His name was Walt Wilkins. They courted back and forth across the state, on hikes in the backcountry of Glacier National Park, where Walt was first posted as a ranger, and on visits to her parents' ranch on Willow Creek. They married in Billings in 1971; though against the rules, his shaggy-haired friends snuck champagne into the church basement in soda bottles.

After stints in Seattle and Colorado, Olive and Walt, now the proud parents of a young daughter, wanted to be back on the land; they pointed their noses toward Montana. They planned to work the irrigated land along the Musselshell, while her parents focused on the ranch. They had a run of good, hard years there. They raised alfalfa hay and wheat; they built up a sheep herd and lived off garden produce and lamb and beef they butchered themselves. They gathered with friends to dance and laugh and share stories. He got elected to the school board; she substitute taught at the county school. They welcomed two sons. Walt first began to feel sick in '86; he died of lymphoma in the winter of '88. He was 46 years old.

Somehow, Olive found a way. She leased out the farm and went to work full-time at Melstone Public School, where she taught kindergarten and first grade for close to 30 years. She leaned on her parents, her community, and her faith. She poured her love and time and ferocity into her children and saw them all graduate - each first in their classes, like her - and sent them off one after the other to Gonzaga University, which long ago had absorbed her own alma mater, Holy Names.

Truly, the measure of her grief and struggle cannot be overstated, yet, even so, Olive greeted every season of her life with grace. Her children off building their own lives, she took writing classes at MSU-B; she explored different parts of Montana with her brothers; she gathered, as they arrived, grandchildren in her lap and told stories of Alaska and the ranch on Willow Creek and their Grandpa Walt. She moved to Spokane in 2012, to be closer to family, and there found a church community and volunteered with the food pantry and with refugee resettlement. She loved garden cucumbers and goldfinches; she made lists of new books to read; she visited Ireland; Washington, DC; and the Oregon Coast. She made yearly trips back to eastern Montana; she loved all her life those wide skies and astonishing sunsets.

Olive was preceded in death by her mother, Mary Ahern Maxwell; her father, Jim Maxwell; and her husband, Walt Wilkins. She is survived by her daughter, Mary Wilkins-Roberts, and Mary's children Siena, Maxwell, and Claire; her son and daughter-in-law, Joe and Liz Wilkins, and their children Walter and Edith; her son and daughter-in-law, Paul and Jane Wilkins and their children Iris, Rose, and Camille; her brothers and sisters-in-law, Mike and Kristin, Lawrence and Eva, and Tom and Linda; and her many nieces and nephews.

Even as she aged and her world became more circumscribed, Olive lived a rich emotional, intellectual, and spiritual life. One of her great lessons for us all is how to find hope in hardship, how to bring happiness from whatever we're given.

A rosary, funeral mass, and reception will take place at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Spokane on Thursday, August 21. The rosary will be said at 10:30 AM; the funeral mass will begin at 11 AM. A burial at the Melstone Cemetery and gathering at the Melstone Community Center will be held later this fall.

Condolences can be sent to 1017 NE 17th Ave., Spokane, WA 99203.