George Benjamin Chaffee

George B. Chaffee passed on April 25, 2011 at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena surrounded by his family. George was born in Billings, Montana on April 5, 1923. He packed a lot of living into his 88 years, was a force to be reckoned with, and will be missed.

Dad grew up in Livingston, Montana. He fished and swam the Yellowstone River as a boy and told us about selling whitefish his family caught door-to-door during the Great Depression. He played basketball for the Park County High Rangers, graduating in 1941. He fired coal locomotives for the Northern Pacific, and worked with his father, a Northern Pacific locomotive engineer. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Dad volunteered and joined the Navy. He served in the Pacific during World War II and told us stories of being “aboard ship” in the great battles for Guam, the Mariana Islands and Okinawa.

Following his Naval service, he returned to Montana, and like many World War II vets, used the GI Bill to go to college. He graduated from the University of Montana in 1951 with a degree in Wildlife Management and Education and later took graduate courses in Range Management. He worked as a Ranger in Yellowstone National Park and took an assignment in Alaska where he spent three months “batching it” in the wilds of the Kenai Peninsula, and then a winter in Denali National Park.

Dad returned to Montana, working for a number of natural resource agencies, including Montana Fish and Game, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. He often talked of his range management work on the Helena Forest and knew many local ranchers. He was also proud of an assignment for the Montana Department of State Lands as Chief Field Agent during Governor Babcock’s administration. Up until just a couple years ago, Dad worked as a Natural Resource consultant for many agencies and Montana ranchers. Along with having itchy feet, he was a life-long botanist and instilled in all of us a love of nature and being outdoors.

While on an assignment on the Gallatin National Forest in Bozeman he met Carol, his life partner and they were married in 1954. With the arrival of five children, Dad became a devoted family man. The folks settled on Lump Gulch, near Clancy when the children started school, and stayed put for 30 years. Our family has many memories of hiking, camping, fishing and hunting as we grew up, and as we look back, we were blessed. When the children were raised and left home, Dad and Mom continued their adventures, living in Eureka, Ulm and finally in the Bitterroot before returning to Helena recently.

George is survived by his wife, Carol of Helena; children and their spouses, Jeff and Julie Chaffee of Clancy, Patty and Bruce Bell of Big Timber, Jean and Zach Pallister of Helena, Lola and Randy Ramey of Spokane and Diane and Steve Sigler of Missoula. He was Grandpa to 12 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, and several aunts and uncles.

When you think of George, take time to value nature, and pull a weed or plant some native grass, a shrub or a tree.

A memorial service celebrating George’s life will be 11:30 a.m. Friday, April 29, 2011 at Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home. A reception will be held at the First Presbyterian Church immediately following the memorial service. A burial with military honors will be 2:45 p.m. at Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison. Condolences may be sent to the family by visiting www.aswfuneralhome.com.

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