Arthur Carlyle Hagenston

Glendive, Montana: Arthur Carlyle Hagenston, age 85 passed away on Friday, March 12, 2010 at the Glendive Medical Center Extended Care in Glendive. A Life Tribute service will be held at 10:30 A.M. on Thursday, March 18, 2010 at the Chapel of the Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home in Glendive with Celebrant Sandy Silha and Pastor James Hageman officiating. Private family interment will be in the Dawson Memorial Cemetery in Glendive. Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home of Glendive has been entrusted with the arrangements. Arthur was born on July 9, 1924 the son of Arthur S. and Olive (Judkins) Hagenston in Watertown, South Dakota. He lived at Banks, North Dakota, where he attended grade school until 1933 when the family moved to Williston, North Dakota, and the next year to Dickinson, North Dakota where he graduated from Dickinson High School with the class of 1942. After graduation he moved with his family to Glendive where he attended Dawson Community College before joining the United States Air Force in 1943. He completed his pilot training in B-25s in 1944 and Flight engineering in 1945. After his honorable discharge from the military he returned to Glendive and attended Dawson Community College before entering the hardware business with his father and uncle. Arthur married the love of his life Edith Knauff on September 22, 1946 in Glendive. They resided in Glendive where Art took over the management of Hagenston Hardware and later purchased it from his father in 1954. He was very active in the Glendive community and served on the Dawson County High School, Dawson Community College and Glendive Community Hospital boards, on the Montana Hardware Association board and was a Commissioner of the Montana Fish and Game Department. Art sold Hagenston Hardware to his son Greg in 1980. He then pursued ranching and farming as a hobby as well as spending many summers at their cabin at Silvergate, Montana. Art was an avid waterfowl hunter, as well as a devoted New York Yankees fan and loved spending time with his grandchildren. Art could fix anything, but one of his greatest gifts to his family and friends was his storytelling. Some people have the personality to light up a room, but Art would light up your life. He loved people and making conversations with everyone. He had a never ending smile and sense of humor that gave you a new outlook on life with any situation. Art was preceded in death by his parents, two grandsons; Stanley Hagenston and Alex Brown, one brother; Bob Hagenston. Survivors include his wife Edith of Glendive, two sons; Dennis (Kit) Hagenston of Billings, Montana and Greg (Evelyn) Hagenston of Glendive, one daughter; Audre (Ron) Thom of Billings, 6 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren, two sisters; Mary Lou (Mike) Appleby of Ennis, Montana and Juliana (Jerry) Howard of St. Cloud, Minnesota, numerous nieces and nephews. Memorials are suggested to Ducks Unlimited, The Glendive Medical Center Foundation or the charity of ones choice. Remembrances and condolences may be shared with the family at: www.silvernale-silhafuneralhome.com Arthur Carlyle Hagenston Life Tribute Service Chapel of the Silvernale-Silha Funeral Home Glendive, Montana March 18, 2010 Welcome: Master of Ceremonies Spiritual reading: Reverend Hageman Video Tribute Eulogy: Celebrant Arthur Carlyle Hagenston. Art was a man with a large presence in our world. Deeply loved by family, highly respected, well-liked and very active in business and in our community, Art was a unique personality. He embraced life and all it had to offer with a very special and positive attitude, a wonderful sense of humor, and the gift of bringing smiles to the faces, and laughter to the hearts and souls of everyone around him. Art passionately enjoyed and learned from the opportunities life provided to him, and had the ability to find the positive in the troubles and tragedies life sent his way. It was with all these qualities that he touched many lives and many hearts. Art was a great storyteller. He loved history, personal, family, and world history. Today we will honor Art by telling a bit of his story. Art wrote an autobiography of the first 20 years of his life, and some of the words and stories you will hear were written by Art himself. Born in 1924, Art’s earliest memories are on the family’s homesteads on the Missouri breaks, 20 miles north of Watford City, North Dakota, near the small town of Banks. Art states that in a 5 mile radius there were a lot of people related either by blood or by marriage. Of German, Scotch, Irish ancestors mixed with full-blooded Norwegians, Art once asked his mother what his heritage was. She replied he was a “Yankee!” Art vividly recalled his Grandpa Judkins as a man with a “huge, flowing red mustache”, who would sit Art on his lap and tell him exciting stories of fighting Indians in Maine. Grandpa also let Art help with the milking and tending of the stock, and taught Art to love toast with thick cream poured over it. There were lots of cousins around, and in Art’s words, life on the farm was “like heaven on earth.” Throughout life, Christmas was always a favorite time for Art, probably because he so enjoyed the Christmas’ of his youth. Art describes Christmas on the farm this way: “Christmas Day at Grandpa Judkins’ was as close to perfect for a preschooler as could be. All of us kids sat around the big living room, waiting for Santa to come over the hill in the sleigh. One of the men would dress up as Santa and rush into the house with a bag full of toys. One for each, and I’m sure they were mostly homemade, but what a thrill, the big dinner and all of those kids to play with. When my year older cousin, Stanley, told me there wasn’t a Santa, I bloodied his nose good!” By the way, Stanley was Art’s best friend. In the fall of 1930, Art began his formal education in a one-room school with one teacher for about 30 kids, grades 1-8. This was also when the depression had started. In later years, Art realized that they had been poor, but at the time he says everyone was in the same boat, and as kids, they didn’t know there was a depression. There was always food to eat and clothes to wear. His father “worked hard and built his farm up from scratch.” The farm provided plenty of work for all the family, and Art learned a strong work ethic early in life. Art describes that time with these words: “My first few years on farm left me with many loves and impressions that stayed with me forever. The main entertainment in the summer was the baseball. All of my uncles and cousins played…and they were good. My Dad started playing catch with me when I started walking and by the time I was in first grade, I could catch a baseball as fast as he could throw. My first big present was a catcher’s mitt from the Wards catalog. I could have cared less if that would have been my only possession… My uncles, besides having a great love for baseball, were hunters. They always took us along and gave us guns as soon as we could carry one. As we got older, they would let us go on our own to hunt.” Baseball and hunting were both lifelong passions for Art. When Art was nine, tough times drove the family off the farm, and they moved to Williston, North Dakota. It is the only time Art could remember running away from home. He stayed in the hills most of the night, until hunger brought him home. School in Williston was quite a change for Art with one teacher for just his grade, electric lights and indoor plumbing. Other firsts for Art was the movies, malted milks, tackle football, and rollerskates with sidewalks to skate on. Art also saw his first Catholic nuns and didn’t know what they were until his cousins told him they were “ghosts.” A year later, the family moved to Dickinson, North Dakota, where Art remained until he graduated from high school. Art wrote the following about life in Dickinson: “Growing up in Dickinson was fun times…baseball, basketball and hunting were my main interests. I got by in school as an average student, but never took the classes seriously, never flunked a class, but never brought many A’s home on the card. Dad always encouraged me to hunt, and would let me skip school occasionally if Mom would write the excuse. Dad bought me a used 16 gauge model 97 that was worn out on the hammer safety and so that’s why the car tire, bedroom window, and a case of eggs in the basement went. When I was 12, I took Dad’s 12 gauge without his knowledge and …shot a couple of ducks, my first, and was so proud of them I walked down the middle of main street with them. My Grandmother about had a fit over that cuz she said the season wasn’t open and I had no license either. I didn’t know there was such a thing. Some time later a couple of us… shot duck but instead of taking it home, we cleaned it and was cooking it on a campfire when the warden came on us and asked what we were eating, and I told him it was crow and he laughed so hard he had to lay on the ground. When he left, he told us to quit shooting ducks.” Of all the hunting Art did in his lifetime and he did a lot, duck hunting was his favorite. A few of Art’s notes from his childhood included: Good advice his father gave him –don’t lie! Art once stole leather shoelaces from the dime store. He didn’t get caught but returned them anyway. His first smoke was dried manure and weeds in a pipe. Art moved to Glendive the day after he graduated from high school, in 1942. His dad had been living in Glendive for some time. Art began working for a general contractor who was building a farm home. Art made 50 cents an hour as a laborer. That summer, Art met Edith Knauff and they began dating. Art later told his daughter, Audre, that he had seen Edith walking across the street and knew she was the one. In the fall, he enrolled in pre-engineering at Dawson Community College. The draft was in effect and many young men were leaving for the service. Art and a friend, Joe Morasko, took the Air Force exam, but also had to go to Butte for the draft exam. As he and Joe anxiously waited for the Air Force to call them, Art quit college and went to work on a farm. The Air Force did call them, and they stayed together for about a year, through basic training and flight training. After being sent to California for more flight training and ground school, Art was anxious to take on the Japs. But the Air Force had many pilots and more training and flights schools were required. After rigorous training and several close calls, Art was one of the pilots chosen to fly the new, long range B-29 bombers. After finishing training on these planes, crews were formed and Art’s crew had orders to ship overseas, but by then the atom bomb had been dropped, the war was over, crews were broken up and Art applied for a discharge. He got home in late fall of 1945 with $600 left after two and a half years in the Air Force. After considering several options, Art enrolled again in college classes in Glendive. He was dating Edith rather steadily, and working after school fixing small appliances and electric merchandise for his dad at the hardware store his dad had purchased the year before. Art signed up for the G.I. training program to train at the store. Art concluded his autobiography on this part of his life with these words. “I liked the work and the hardware merchandise interested me. I was getting more serious about settling down and getting married and starting a family. Asked Edith about it and she said OK but later. She had a good job with the government and was making more money than I. We got married that Sept. in 1946 and borrowed my dad’s car and took a two week trip through western Montana. Came home and moved into my folks’ basement apartment that they had fixed up. Put my nose to the grindstone and decided to learn the hardware business.” And learn it he did, eventually taking over the store in 1952. One asset Art had was a natural aptitude for mechanics, plumbing, electronics, construction, and he saved everything. When working on projects he always had a part in the garage that could fix things, and if he didn’t, he could make a part to fix it out of the things he had saved. But his biggest asset was that he liked people, liked talking to them about everything, liked helping them. And people sensed that about Art. He knew the importance of knowing his customers, for sure their names, and knowing his merchandise and his store. He expected the same from his employees. All three of Art’s children worked in the hardware store for their dad. Audre and Dennis worked there until they left home, but Greg stayed and eventually became the manager when his father retired. A favorite story they tell is if Art went down into the basement and there were boxes to be unpacked that no one seemed to be getting to as quickly as he thought they should, he would put a silver dollar under them and then wait to see who came up showing what they had found. Art worked very hard to make his business a success. He was also active in many community organizations and projects, and served on various boards. From 1973 through 1979, Art was part of a five-member board, appointed by the governor, who set policy and gave advice to the Montana Fish and Game Department about the wishes of the people. In an interview, Art commented, “My main project was to shorten hunting seasons and make them more compatible to the landowners.” He greatly enjoyed his work on the commission, which was only natural considering his love of hunting. Fall was Art’s favorite season; it was time to hunt. He loved the outdoors. Week long pack trips with friends to hunt elk was an annual event which began in the 1950’s. Annual trips with family and friends to Fox Lake, even if it was dry, to hunt geese and ducks also was something Art planned. Art’s son, Dennis, recalls these hunts and tells that Art and his goose hunting friends, would dig shallow holes, more like shallow graves according to Dennis, to lie in as they waited for the geese or ducks to come in. They would haul the dirt to the yard of the landowner, go out at 3 am to get positioned, freeze until the birds came in, have their hunt, and then haul the dirt back and fill the holes. Dennis reports that hunting was very hard work. Greg and Dennis tell a story about Art and friends, loading the boat with shells, guns, decoys, coolers, and four men. As the last man got into the boat, it sank. After much colorful language, talk of drowning, and flailing about, they realized the water was only waist deep. Just another hunting adventure, to be told about later, slightly embellished. As a teenager on hunts with his grandfather and his friends, Grandson Adam learned all the colorful language he would ever need to know in life. A hunt special to Adam was after Art retired and was spending each fall hunting ducks along Montana’s Hi-line. Adam was on leave from the Army, and joined his grandfather in his camper for a couple weeks of duck hunting. There are possession limits on ducks, and in order to hunt each day, by the third day, Adam and Art had to eat ducks twice a day, to stay within the limits. Cooked every way imaginable, Art finally commented that he didn’t care to eat duck for a year! A lifelong love of Art’s was farming. When Art retired from the hardware store, he, and his hunting buddies, Bob Baker, Hank Lillijord, and Don Heron, the “Big Four”, bought a farm on Marsh Road. The other three were basically just investors, but Art actually did the farming and ranching, something he had always dreamed of doing again someday. He had never lost his love of the land. Art engaged in many interesting activities during his lifetime. A few included: He always had black labs as pets. He loved lutefisk and he and Vern Stundahl would have contests over who could eat the most at the annual lutefisk dinners. The claim was 7 platters. He was an avid watcher of C-Span, yelling at the politicians on televsion about their “rotten” decisions. Art played computer games to keep his brain active. His goal was to win 32,000 different games. He won 28,322 different games towards that goal. And the list goes on… During his life, Art’s greatest interest and pride and joy were his family. His children and grandchildren knew he was the leader of the family. His good humor and hearty laugh would fill up a room. Dennis, Greg, and Audre remember Sundays when the family would go out on the river in the jet boat, and spend the day fishing and hunting agates. And the kids and grandkids all loved his story telling, believing his stories of growing up on the plains of North Dakota, of wrestling grizzlies, fighting Indians, and how he was shot with an arrow through the head, in one ear and out the other, as he would demonstrate with a pencil. When asked about his big belly by the grandkids, Art would tell an elaborate story about eating a basketball seed. It went into his tummy and grew into a basketball. Granddaughter Anna wrote that a strong childhood memory of hers was: “ Grandpa Art in his den, sitting on a big black leather chair, pulls me into his lap and sings, ‘Trot-trot to Boston to buy a bag of beans, trot-trot back again and fall into the seeeea.’ (Upon which I would fall between his legs)… I’m going to miss my grandpa Art, especially his stories and his laugh. But he’ll live on a little through me every time I trot-trot a small child on my lap to Boston, and explain how, when I was small, one of my brothers shot me in the head with an arrow, but I was lucky…” A favorite with everyone was the family cabin at Silvergate, in the mountains near Cooke City, Montana. Many wonderful memories were made there in the summers with Art and Edith and all the family. Granddaughter Ashley fondly remembers mornings at the Silvergate cabin. She, Grandpa, and her brother would climb on the 4-wheeler, riding across the creek to the store to buy the morning newspaper. Grandpa would get each of them candy as he visited with any and all who were around. Son-in-law Ron jokingly tells his wife, Audre, that he married her just for her parents, and seriously says that Art is like the father he didn’t have. Ron says Art was part Art Carney, with all his hand motions, part Red Skelton with his humor, and 60% Archie Bunker about stating his opinions and feelings. Ron just loved his father-in-law and says they “broke the mold when they made Art!” Art made everyone feel special just by paying attention to them. That special feeling came from being included along on a hunt, or Adam and Art exchanging handwritten letters for years, or Angie watching her grandfather play with her son, Bradley, Art’s great-grandson, roaring at each other as they pretended to be dinosaurs, or a father coaching his kids in baseball and softball, or a husband teasing his wife, their mother and grandmother, and trying to get a rise out of her with his stories. It was probably his relationship with Edith that was most admired by Art’s children and grandchildren. It was a life partnership between Art and Edith of obvious love and devotion. During almost 64 years of marriage, although they had many different interests, they always included each other in all aspects of life. They had fun together, and took care of each other. Audre says her childhood was so normal and happy it was like those portrayed on television. Granddaughter Ashley visited her grandparents about a month ago and she and her husband talked after they left of how Art and Edith still had that special light in their eyes for each other. Ashley says Grandpa could still make Edith laugh and Grandma could still drive Grandpa nuts. These past four or five years Edith has had health concerns, and Art dedicated himself to lovingly taking care of Edith, and caring for their home. The example of love and devotion he set has been noticed and admired by all the family. Art Hagenston was a very special man. The life he lived, the examples he set, the joy he brought to family and friends will live on in the hearts and lives of those who knew and loved him. He will be greatly missed. Please use the song sheets given to you to join Sam Mehan as he leads us in singing the hymn, “How Great Thou Art” Song: “How Great Thou Art” Stan Fagerstrom’s memories: Celebrant Closing Thoughts: Celebrant It is an important day when we stop to bear witness to a person’s life and times among us, the difference his living and dying made among family and community and to take time to express our grief, our hope, and our memories. Thank you all for being here for this important time. Edith, Dennis, Greg, Audre, and all of Art’s family, as your friends and your community we grieve with you and we grieve for you. Touched though we have been with sadness, as we consider Art’s life, we are filled with memories, both happy and sad. That Art has lived, what Art has experienced can never be taken from him or from us. For this we can be grateful. To have lived well, laughed often and loved much To have gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children To have filled a niche and accomplished a task To have left the world better and to have appreciated earth’s beauty and not failed to express it, To have looked for the best in others and to have given the best of yourself That is achievement. Arthur Carlyle Hagenston, your life was filled with 85 years of the best you had to give. Thank you for showing us how to find our own special achievements. Let us now listen to Sam Mehan sing the “Lord’s Prayer.” Sam is accompanied on the piano today by Ruth Rauch. Song: “The Lord’s Prayer” sung by Sam Mehan, accompanied by pianist Ruth Rauch Spiritual comfort: Reverend Hageman

Arthur Carlyle Hagenston

July 9, 1924 - March 18, 2010

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Arthur Carlyle Hagenston

July 9, 1924 - March 18, 2010

What We Do

Flowers & Gifts

Plan Ahead

About Us

Resources

Obituaries

Grief & Healing

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