Ruth L Stensrud (October 17, 1943 – June 15, 2024  )

A celebration of life service will be held at 12:00 p.m. on Monday, July 29, 2024, at Canyon Life Church, 19 Central Avenue West, Cascade, Montana.

Ruth L. Barkley Stensrud, 80, of Great Falls, passed away quietly Saturday, June 15, 2024. She was surrounded by family and a close friend. She was born October 17,1943, in Havre, Montana, the daughter of Helen and Fred Barkley. Ruth lived most of her adult life in Great Falls, Montana. When she was a child, she lived in Galata, Montana where her mother was a country schoolteacher; as a result, she began her passion for reading at the tender age of 4 years old. In the 9th grade, she attended Gem State Academy in Caldwell, Idaho, where she learned to iron to help with school tuition. From that time on, she loved to iron and talked about it often. She also learned to help with preparing and canning pears. This spurred her absolute love of traveling to Utah annually for the Utah peach harvest in August and September where she would purchase a variety of different peaches in bulk and then bring them home to process and can.

Along her life’s path she lived with her eldest sister, Delores and niece, Verna Lee during most of her high school years, graduating from Great Falls High as a mighty Bison in 1961. During this time, she led an active life, hanging out with friends, going to school, working, and babysitting her niece. She loved helping people and animals in any way she could. Also, she enjoyed road trips to Farmington, New Mexico to visit her sister, Mary.

Ruth met her husband-to-be, John Stensrud, in the winter of 1961. They became good friends and often danced together. During the big flood of 1964, Ruth and her sister were flooded out of the house they lived in. John helped them move first to a house across the railroad tracks and later to his parents’ home when they feared the flood was going to get the house they had moved into. Ruth and John were married in September of 1964, and they shared 57 years of marriage upon John’s death. They both often told people they married their dancing partner. When they married, John already had two sons from his first marriage, Robert Allen Stensrud and John Jesse (aka Jay) Stensrud (both sons are now deceased). After they married, they raised two daughters, Crystal Louise Stensrud- Anderson of Havre, Montana and Sandra Rae Stensrud of Fernley, Nevada.

In 1965, the couple moved to a 4 plex with a shop building in Black Eagle which they later purchased. Ruth was one of the few working women providing for her family in a time when it was predominantly men who worked outside of the home. Ruth began working as a bookkeeper for Western Maintenance, a janitorial cleaning business. She worked her way up and she became Office Manager/Vice-President and led the finance department. She worked there for 20 years. During this time, she took college courses, while working and raising her family (eventually earning her associate’s degree from Northern Montana College in Havre, Montana in 1993). In the late 80’s, she took to the open road and drove 18-wheeler trucks with her husband John and was co-owner/accountant to support their trucking company (Stensrud Trucking). They drove across the continental United States and Canada. Ruth and her husband moved to a place along Belt Creek in Armington, Montana. They eventually sold the trucks, and she spent 12 years doing accounting work as a para-professional at Hamilton Misfeldt & Company. Later, the couple moved back to Black Eagle. A few years later they moved to Great Falls. Because she was exceptional in her work and she had a knack and love for accounting and bookkeeping, she kept busy working various jobs. She especially liked doing truck books and working for Rodger Rader as the office manager/full charge bookkeeper until she passed away.

Ruth wasn’t all about accounting and bookkeeping. She served in the community as a director on the Alzheimer’s Fellowship of the Northern Rockies for 17 years and a director at Park Manor Retirement Home for 7 years. She anonymously donated warm clothing to those in need during the holidays. Also, she donated to the La Vida Mission Seventh Day Adventist Church in New Mexico, supporting her sister Mary’s passion for the mission.

Ruth was beautiful; people often complimented her on her big brown eyes. She was kind-hearted, funny, loyal, and smart. She was a role model to her family by persevering through the good and tough times of life. Her husband John always said, “if it weren’t for your mom and her smarts and work ethic, the family would be living under a bridge in a cardboard box.”

Some of her favorite things in her life were spending time with family and tending to her animals. She loved Siamese cats and Cockapoo dogs. She loved traveling, especially to San Francisco. She was an enthusiastic gardener; tomatoes were one of her favorite things to grow. She looked forward to traditional holiday baking with family, specifically making her Grandma Miller’s Sour Cream Sugar cookies and Fruit cookies, which have been passed down six generations. She also made a mean pot of stew and a special dish of macaroni and mayonnaise.

Ruth’s health was failing since 2021 and it had recently deteriorated rapidly. Ruth passed away quietly in her sleep early Saturday afternoon, June 15, 2024, exactly 12 years to the day after being hospitalized with pneumonia (nearly dying from that). She was preceded in death by her husband, John Robert Stensrud; 2 stepsons, Robert Allen Stensrud and John Jesse (aka Jay) Stensrud; parents, Fred and Helen Barkley; sisters, Delores Cooper-Vance and Mary Barkley Newlon; 1 grandson; and 1 great-granddaughter.

She leaves behind her 2 daughters, Crystal L Anderson (Randy) and Sandra “Sandi” R. Stensrud; 5 granddaughters, Christina Stensrud, Carie Korst Hughes (Dan), Chilo Jensen (Dane), Nichole Howard (Joe), and Jessica Carlson (John). In addition to the above-named children and grandchildren, Ruth is survived by 11 great-grandchildren; 2 great-great-grandchildren; and several nieces, nephews, and friends.

Condolences may be shared online at www.OConnorFuneralHome.com.

Our Mother Poem
By: memorialcardshop.co.uk
You can only have one Mother, patient, kind and true;
No other friend in all the world will be the same to you.
When other friends forsake you, to mother you will return,
For all her loving kindness,
She asks nothing in return.
As we look upon her picture, sweet memories we recall,
Of a face so full of sunshine, and a smile for one and all.
Sweet Jesus, take this message, to our dear Mother up above; tell her how we miss her,
And give her all our love.

Author: Staff

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