Thomas H. Stanger, age 77 of Helena

Memories

Read the thoughts and memories, then feel free to add your own.

1. Doug and Sandy Morgan says

   July 31, 2018 at 10:29 am

   Sherleen, our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family at this time. We wil miss Tom and his wonderful sense of humor. He was a loving husband and father and a great example to us.
   Please accept our sympathy and love for each of you.
   Love Doug and Sandy Morgan

2. Carol Bridge says

   August 1, 2018 at 6:29 pm

   Sherleen, It was an honor and privilege to be of service to you and Tom during his cancer treatment. He was a wonderful man. I enjoyed visiting with him and you. Peace, love and healing to you and your family now and forever. Carol Bridge Volunteer Cancer Treatment Centee

3. John Emmert says

   August 2, 2018 at 10:26 am

   See you in Heaven, Brother. Our families have been closely intertwined for a long time. I will try to come Sunday, but we’re committed to two other sadnesses and a Family Reuninon, all in the Flathead. I loved Tom’s sense of humor. It really jelled with mine. Tom’s character is reflected in his wonderful family whom we love. I know he’s only moving on, but I’ll still miss him. Love, Geezer and Nancy.

4. Virgil Stanger says

   August 2, 2018 at 8:15 pm

   My dear sister Sherlene, Tom’s children, grandchildren and all who loved him. Like you I am in sorrow of the passing of Tom and I have so many memories of my younger brother. We were so different in our beliefs and yet so much alike in our temperament, but the strongest believe or if you will thought, that we shared was a deep and abiding love for our family, especially our children. All of our lives when ever we could we would talk about what we considered deep and important things, and so I have so many memories of those times we were together. For some reason of all those times and for a reason I don’t understand myself one chance meeting stands out at this moment. If I recall it was the summer of 1971, I spent all of that summer hauling gypsum from Lead Ore, Idaho to the cement plant at our home town in Inkom, Idaho. As I was driving the old Red Kenworth between Blackfoot and Pocatello, suddenly I saw that my brother Tom in his old dodge Dart was right beside me waving and laughing. I blew some air at him and waved back so glad to see him. He drove ahead of me and I pulled over to the side of the road and I parked the old Kenworth behind him and set the brakes. We got out of our vehicles, gave each other a hug and for at least an hour and a half sat in his old Dodge Dart and tried to solve the problems of the world, until we realized the sun was about to go down. We had a lot of those conversations through the years but for some reason this meeting stands out over all the rest. I don’t know why that is, perhaps because I was so happy to see my younger brother, I loved him, the younger brother he was when we were boys and respected and loved that boy that became a man.
   I’ve had a passage in my mind from a novel, “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”, by Thornton Wilder. For those who haven’t read his work it is about life, religion, love and death and as we find toward the end of the novel mostly about love, which is why I love the novel so much. Near the end of the novel an elderly Nun at a convent reflects on so many people who died when the bridge over San Luis Rey collapsed. Let me end by quoting the thoughts the old nun had:
   “But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
   I’ll be 84 years old my next birthday and in all my years I’ve learned that love is everything. There are things that matter but all those things pale compared with the love we have for one another. Like the old Nun I believe the love not only continues but multiples. I dearly loved you, Tom and will love you forever.
   Your brother, Virgil