Catherine Skogen, 90
Catherine Katie or Kate Skogen passed quietly into eternity Sunday Oct. 30, 2005, with the faith that she would see her savior face to face and be reunited with her loved ones.
Katie was born to Fredrick J. and Marion Myers Desch on Jan. 6, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio. She traveled with her family by train, wagon, and the Klondyke steamboat to Polson in 1917. She attended Sunny Slope School and Polson High School, excelled in academics, and rode horseback over the surrounding hills. She played the fiddle and piano by ear.
She met her husband, Floyd Skogen, when she came to Kalispell to baby-sit for his cousins. They were married in 1936, in Sandpoint, Idaho, and spent 67-plus years together.
As a young woman, Katie was a waitress in several local restaurants, including The Silver Grill. She and Floyd spent the war years in Seattle, where daughters Geraldine Jerry and Barbara were born.
The family returned to Kalispell in 1945. Katie managed the boys department in Buttreys Department Store in the 1950s and 60s and the nonfoods departments in Adkins (later Rosauers) until 1976. She thrived on the challenge of merchandising, promotion and retail sales.
She and Floyd enjoyed a long and happy retirement, traveIing extensively in their motor home, often accompanied by daughter Jerry and her husband, Gary. They loved attending countless antique auto functions, jazz festivals, wintering in Yuma, Ariz., and tours in Mexico. She enjoyed painting in oils until her sight failed.
Katie will be loved and remembered as the family caregiver, giving herself unselfishly to the loving care of siblings, father, mother-in-law, all the children and her husband.
Katie was a longtime member of Central Bible Church, the Eagles Auxiliary and Flathead Pioneer Auto Club.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Floyd Skogen; parents; siblings, Virginia Zimmerman, Fred Desch and Marian Johnson.
She is survived by daughters, Geraldine Jerry Young and husband, Gary, and Barbara Cameron, all of Kalispell; special niece, Joyce Potts, and husband, Les, of Bigfork; brothers, Melvin Desch and wife, Marjorie, and Roy Desch, all of Kalispell; 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, Wednesday, Nov. 2, at Johnson Mortuary. Funeral services are planned for 2 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, at Johnson Mortuary. Interment will be at C.E. Conrad Memorial Cemetery and a gathering will be afterward at Central Bible Church.
Memorials are suggested to Central Bible Church or the Salvation Army.