Arnold H. Dillard

Arnold H. Dillard, 97, passed away on July 4 at Beartooth Manor in Columbus.

He was born on Nov. 24, 1914, in Hoquiam, Wash., to Enoch and Grace (Howard) Dillard.

He was raised on a homestead on North River at a village called Vesta in Grays Harbor County, Washington.

He attended grade school at Vesta and high school at Brooklyn, Wash. He graduated from Washington State College, Pullman, with a degree in forestry in 1940.

In 1937 he started working for the U.S. Forest Service during the summer months at Seeley Lake.

He entered the military service, the Army, on Nov. 6, 1941. For a while he served as an intelligence officer in U.S. VII Corps under Gen. Middleton. He asked for a transfer and was assigned to the 35th Combat Engineers where he served in Europe until the end of the war. He was discharged from the service as a captain on Dec. 8, 1945.

Prior to going overseas he was married to Iris Anderson, of Missoula, on April 19, 1943, at Hagerstown, Md.

Besides working for the Forest Service at Seeley Lake in 1937, he had assignments of what was the Lolo Ranger District of the Lolo Forest, the Superior District of the Lolo Forest, the Bonners Ferry District of the Kootenai Forest, the North Fork District of the Flathead Forest, and then to the Bigfork District of the Flathead Forest where he retired in 1970 as District Ranger, after 30 years of government service. He then did consulting work for a number of years.

He built a new home at 215 Chapman Hill in Bigfork. He moved to Buffalo Hill Terrace in Kalispell in 2004.

He was preceded in death by his sister Evalyne and his brother-in-law Gerald Lawson; his brother Dean Dillard; his brother Dick and sister-in-law Merren Dillard; and his beloved wife, Iris M. Dillard.

He married Erna (Krause) Tetrault in 1994 and they were married for four years, dissolving their marriage in 1998. Erna preceded him in death.

He is survived by two daughters, Linda Roth of Whitefish and her husband Boyd of Kalispell, and Carol Larson and her husband Jim of Columbus; two grandsons, Ben Larson and wife Brielle of Sidney, and Lucas Larson and wife Amy of Laurel; and four great-grandchildren, two boys and two girls, Rhys and Malia Larson, (Ben and Brielle’s), and Olen and Eli Lynn Larson (Lucas and Amy’s); a sister-in-law, Shirley Dillard of Montesano, Wash.; numerous nieces and nephews; and a cousin.

Memorial services for Arnold will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 21 at the Community United Methodist Church in Bigfork. Urn burial will be in Sunset Memorial Gardens in Missoula.