Anne K. Dietrich

On June 27, 2023, we lost Anne K. Dietrich, Mom, Grannie Annie, at the age of 94.

Anne was born a year before the Great Depression on Oct. 14, 1928. She outlived nearly every member of her generation.

She was born in her grandparents’ home in Fairview, Montana. She was a child of an agricultural community, many who had “proved up” their homesteads. Anne remained deeply linked to those modest roots. Later, as the wife of dedicated lawyer John M. “Jack” Dietrich, and the mother of five children, she was exposed to many strong, interesting, and varied personalities. Anne never forgot whence she came, nor failed to bring common sense, light-heartedness, and humor to her environment. Her German/Norwegian/immigrant sense of modesty (she was more authentic than anyone in Lake Wobegon) created a loving and compassionate environment for her family, friends, community, and her beloved Mayflower Church.

In the Great Depression, her father, Louis C. Kiefer and her mother Etta Bauman Kiefer, moved from Fairview, along Montana’s Hi-Line, to Havre and Shelby, and then settled in Deer Lodge; they lived in 14 homes until they purchased a house in Deer Lodge. “I often had only one dress before my high school years.” In Deer Lodge, Louis managed a grocery store. “He would sometimes help the less fortunate to have enough to eat,” she observed. In the 1930s, raised as a “prison city kittie,” she befriended the Middleton family, headed by the Montana State prison warden, and his daughter, Tomme Lu Worden, who remained a lifelong friend. She remembered the “wireless” radio announce the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing while as an early teen she helped her parents install storm windows on the family home.  he observed the nation go to war and many young men from Deer Lodge take part. Jack, the “boy across the street,” had been drafted out of his first year at Stanford. Later in the war years. she and he exchanged letters as he served in Casablanca and Tripoli in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

After the war, from 1946 to 1947, she studied at the University of Montana and developed there, working in its library, a lifelong passion for reading. “I unwrapped the new books as they came in and got first crack at reading them.”  And there she developed a progressive set of friends (Margot, Lorraine, Barbara, Joanne) who would influence her progressive humanism throughout her life.

She married the “young man across the street,” Jack Dietrich, on June 19, 1948, at the Presbyterian Church in Deer Lodge. She was drafted into the role of secretary in his fledgling law practice, helping him be elected as Powell County Attorney. Both of their parents lived in the same neighborhood. There, she gave life to her first two children, Paul and Janet.

In 1955, Jack and Anne surprised themselves and their parents when they left a recently purchased “forever home” in Deer Lodge to move to Billings for a new opportunity. She supported Jack in his law career at the Crowley Law Firm. Billings was vibrant with Williston Basin oil money and post-war expansion. They bought a modest farmhouse on what was then the far West End of Billings (the 2000 block of Pryor Lane), which lacked a phone for several months, and which was served by a dirt road. They renovated the home, adding a second story, and it would serve as her Billings abode for over 62 years until 2017. During the Pryor Lane years, she would give life to three more children, David, Susan and Katja. It was in this home that Mom and Dad exemplified the quote “There are two things we give our children: one is roots, the other wings.”

Missing the mountains of Deer Lodge and Western Montana, in 1960, she and Jack located a lot in the Grizzly Peak Mountain homes in the Beartooth foothills; the cabin would become her weekend and summer mountain escape. She would trail her children through ethnic grocery stores and the Festival of Nations in the mining town of Red Lodge. There, she and Jack met their cabin neighbors from Minneapolis who became ranch partners, Vince and Janet Carpenter, with whom they enjoyed a four-decade partnership.

She was an eclectic reader, a vigilant gardener, and an available confidant to any of her children or grandchildren who needed advice or wisdom. She placed the Cicero quote at her cabin: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” For decades, she attended her local book club (whose selections were much in demand) with a gaggle of friends, introduced to her by Judy Johnson.

Jack died in 2007 and Anne flourished with a second wind of life at 2047 Pryor Lane until 2017 when she moved to Morningstar. “It was like being on a cruise ship,” she would say. She later enjoyed the compassionate care of its Reflections Memory Care Unit since February of 2021. “I intend to live long enough to be a problem to my children,” she would joke. The Dietrich family extends its heartfelt thanks for the help to the staff of Morningstar and Stillwater Hospice.

Anne was preceded in death by her parents, Louis C. Kiefer and Etta Bauman Kiefer; her brother, Louis C. Kiefer; her husband, Jack Dietrich; and her beloved granddaughter, Natalie Anne Dietrich.

Anne is survived by her children, Paul, Janet (Dan Erikson), David (Jan), Suzy (Ryan Clarke) and Katja. Her beloved grandchildren were the light of her life: Christian (and wife Michelle) Dietrich (Paul’s son), Elizabeth Erikson (and husband Trapper Payne), Ellen Erikson (and husband Will Harris) and Zoë Erikson (Janet’s children), Rachel (David’s daughter), Megan (and husband Jon) Lovgren, Patrick and Bailey (Suzy’s children), and Jacob (Katja’s son).

Anne’s great-grandchildren Archer and Weston (Elizabeth), Finley and Addison (Megan) will grow to learn of Great Grannie Annie’s humor and wisdom.

She was a proud member of the Delta Gamma Sorority at the University of Montana, the Billings Chapter “S” P.E.O.; the Junior League of Billings and, in the 1990s, she served on the Fine Arts Board of the University of Montana. She also enjoyed working as a docent at the Yellowstone Art Museum.

A celebration of life will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 22, at Mayflower Church at 2940 Poly Drive , with a reception to follow.

In the words of Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music:

“So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight

… So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu”

In lieu of flowers, please consider a memorial to the Rialto Theater in Deer Lodge, the Billings Public Library Foundation, the Yellowstone Art Museum, The Mayflower Church, or a charity of your choice.