Couple dies one day apart after 66 years of marriage
<p>Bill and Eva DeVall before the 2009 Winter Carnival.</p>
A long-time Whitefish couple died one
day apart last week after being married for more than 66 years.
William DeVall, 92, died Tuesday, Jan.
24, and his wife Eva DeVall, 85, died the next day at their
Whitefish home. The DeValls were both born and raised in Whitefish
and they lived nearly their entire lives here.
The DeVall family name goes way back in
Whitefish history. Bill’s parents, Clarence and Josephine DeVall,
were considered some of the earliest settlers in Whitefish.
According to past Pilot articles, they moved here in 1905 from
Michigan.
Eva’s parents, Charlie and Daisy Duff,
moved to Whitefish in 1920 from Washington. Eva was the sister of
the late Roy Duff.
Both the DeValls and Duffs were early
railroad families.
Bill was a 1938 graduate of Whitefish
High School and Eva graduated in 1945. They married that year in
the Whitefish Methodist Church and eventually had four children
together: Renee, Rodney, Joel and Julie.
Bill served with the U.S. Army in World
War II, he worked for both the Great Northern and Burlington
Northern Railway, and retired in 1976. He was crowned Winter
Carnival King in 1972.
Eva was a bookkeeper at JCCS and was
one of the original secretaries for the Burlington Northern Credit
Union.
Renee Berner recalls her parents
enjoyed playing pinochle together and making jewelry.
“They loved making jewelry,” she said.
“Dad would do the silversmithing and mom would do the bead
work.”
Bill was a fantastic fisherman and
enjoyed hunting mountain lions with friends. He was also an avid
huckleberry picker.
“He’d pick huckleberries and put them
in a shoebox and sell them for spending money,” Berner said. “There
wasn’t anything dad couldn’t do.”
Together, Bill and Eva spent a lot of
time boating and water skiing on Whitefish Lake. They were members
of the Whitefish Lake Boat Club for many years
A memorial service for the DeValls was
held Monday at the Whitefish United Methodist Church. Their full
obituaries are online.