Doris Aline Phillips

Doris Aline Phillips died March 23, 2010, in Lewistown. She was born in Mountain Grove, Mo., in 1923. She was not Rosie the Rivter, but rather, Rosie the Typist, serving an admiral in the Navy Department in Washington, D.C., for most of World War II. She answered a government advertisement on a dare from friends. When a response came saying you will report, those friends chipped in to help finance the train ticket from Bartlesville, Okla., to D.C., which she took alone. Because she was only one of tens of thousands of such women, she lived in a room in a rooming house with eight other women. She married Jack Phillips, a Navy veteran of the Pacific Theatre, in 1945, and moved to the windblown, barren, Northern Great Plains of Montana and made a life. She was a classical pianist, an artist of many mediums, a gardener, a high school graduate who read and revered the classics, and a patient, gentle soul. She is survived by sons, Wayne of Lewistown, John of South Dakota, and Lon of Helena; and a daughter, Sunni, of Helena. Her sister-in-law is Emma Ridgeway of Stanford. Her grandchildren include Johnny and Wendy Phillips of South Dakota, Lars Phillips of Washington, Kaitlin Phillips of New York City, and Hannah Phillips of Kalispell.