Mother's Day: The legacy of Agnes Jones

By JACOB DORAN / Bigfork Eagle

On Sunday, children young and old gathered to celebrate the lives and tireless service of their mothers—those unsung heroes without whose sacrifices most of us would not be who we are today and none of us could have been at all.

Of those celebrated, living or dead, few have shared the kind of experiences with their children as Agnes Jones.

Two of Jones' children, Patrick and Tim, both of whom still live near her and enjoy her company regularly, came to see her at Lake View Care Center and treated her to a special meal at Bigfork Inn. As they dined, they recalled with fondness the life their mother had lived and the lessons she had taught them about hard work and how to treat others.

When it came to hard work, Agnes was no stranger. Her parents, Albert and Anne Irene Lalonde, carried she and her siblings around the country to help with the road construction business started by her father in 1914.

The Albert Lalonde Company represents a part of Montana's history, just as O'Neil and Angnes Jones represent a piece of Bigfork's history. In the company's earlier years, the construction crew numbered only 15-20 men, but as the need for roads increased the company employed as many as 100 men and grew to be one of the largest construction firms in the state.

In her later years, Agnes compiled an autobiography to document her adventures with her mother and father, traveling throughout Montana and toiling through the summer months to keep the company working like a finely oiled machine. In it, she described herself as a child of the prairie, owing to the amount of time she spent moving across Eastern Montana.

"The ever-present wind sometimes had us wondering what would happen when Montana blew away!" she recalls in the story. "Well, Montana is still here and so am I."

Until the Albert Lalonde Company acquired heavier equipment, the construction season would last from March until October or November, with one project continuing for the entire season. Agnes and her siblings would stay at their home in Bainville until school was out and then join their parents, returning again in the fall under the care of her grandmother until the season ended and her parents came home.

"The next morning would find you up again to face another grueling day with rousing the hired men, getting the breakfast, readying the equipment and horses, shopping for food," Agnes records in her autobiography, "and this was an all season routine. Don't forget doing the dishes. When I was old enough, that was my job."

It was one of many jobs that Agnes carried out during her time at the construction camp, from summer to summer. From her chores around the camp to purchasing groceries for the crew and lighting the flares in the evenings on the highway job between Sidney and Fairview, which earned her the title of "Aggie the Lamplighter." Once or twice each season, she would help move the camp, packing and unpacking, while horses pulled the cook and bunk shacks. At the age of 10 and 11, her father even let her drive some of the men to work and help him place the blue stakes that would show the men the height of the finished road.

From 1934 on, their home was in Sidney, where more than a thousand children were enrolled at the school.

Eventually, Agnes married O'Neil Jones who became a foreman for the family business. She and O'Neil continued to travel the state doing the same work that she had known all her life.

Agnes gave birth to five children in all, Irene (Byrd), Dennis, Patrick, Tim and Terry, three of whom still live close by. Her children still recall traveling long distances to reach their next job site or to return home when the season was over, in cramped vehicles packed with the supplies that carried them through each season.

The time they spend together, whether on the job or crowded into their canary yellow 1954 ragtop Ford Sunliner, became a special time of bonding. During their travels, they fell learned and fell in love with the history of each area, passing on to their children Montana's enduring legacy.

Not surprisingly, Patrick still runs the bookstore his father built on Grand Avenue, on the edge of the property his parents purchased when they moved to Bigfork in 1964, after larger companies equipped for building more modern roads forced them to retire from the business of road construction. To this day, the store is filled with book on Montana history.

They property they purchased formerly housed the old livery stables and lumber company, which they turned into a store and one of Bigfork's first art galleries. The gallery itself was responsible for initiating a trend of art galleries in the area and instrumental in the shaping of Bigfork as art community.

O'Neil became one of the founding members of the Bigfork Development Company, which became the Community Foundation For a Better Bigfork, and was honored with a certificate that recognized him as the first official member.

Agnes worked in the store and taught the children how to greet people. Decades later, Patrick still contends that the hospitality to which she was given and modeled for her children was one of her greatest gifts and the best thing he ever learned about business.

"She was very much like her own mother," Patrick tells. "I never met anyone with more common sense than my mom. She knew how to speak to people and she set the tone for us kids. We're all friendly and decent to people. We all picked up way of being nice to others, and that's still one of my goals today."

Although she will be 89 on July 1, Patrick says he will always remember his mother as an elegant woman without pretense, who loved her family and enjoyed the company of the other ladies in the community, especially her dear friend Effie Docksteader, who passed away in recent years.

"She never put on a show of who she was," he says. "She didn't have to."