Dorothy Ann 'Dottie' Riley, 85
Dorothy Ann Riley, 85, better known as Dottie to friends and family, passed away peacefully at her home in Columbia Falls, March 29, 2017, with family members at her bedside.
Born Jan. 14, 1932, in Ypsilanti, North Dakota, Dottie was the first child and daughter to Carl and Laura May (Anderson) Nelson, soon to be followed by a brother, Duane, and a sister, Doris. The young family lost their mother to colon cancer when Dottie was 7. In a life sketch, she describes living for a short while afterward with their father’s sister in Big Falls, Minnesota, then later shuttling between homes of grandparents and maternal aunts and uncles in Minnesota and North Dakota. During snow winter days, one uncle would hitch the horses to the sleigh, cover everybody up, and cart them off to school. She especially enjoyed farm life in Jamestown, North Dakota, where the girls would listen to phonograph records in an upstairs bedroom and eat her aunt’s good roll-out cookies fresh from the oven.
On Jan. 21, 1950, at age 18, Dottie married Wallace Millard Riley in the Lutheran Church of Bemidji, Minnesota. He said she’d winked at him during their first meeting and he had to come back to see what she meant by it. They soon moved to Montana where Wally had found steady work at the Plum Creek Mill in Columbia Falls. Several years later they bought land a few miles from town and built a permanent home for their growing family of three sons, Jim R., Ronald W., and Leslie B. Riley.
With Wally a good provider, Dottie settled in as helpmate to raise her sons and enjoy life on their rural acreage. She cooked and baked, cleaned, sewed and mended, kept a cow and chickens, sowed a garden, looked after hunting horses, and fed and loved various dogs that arrived at her door. She grew skilled at preserving wild game and fish Wally brought home. She also loved peacocks and for years raised flocks of these exotic birds which terrorized the neighborhood with their squawking and pecking. Always a lover of nature, in her later years, it’s been the wild creatures moving through the fields around her home — birds, squirrels, deer and turkeys — that she watched out for most.
Her parents and her husband of 66 years preceded Dottie in death.
Surviving are her sons, Jim living in Hawaii, Ron at the family home in Columbia Falls, and Les in Alaska; grandchildren, Tyler, Desiree, Jamie and Josh; several great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.
The family wishes to thank the staff at Hidden Meadows Memory Care and at Home Options Hospice for their loving care of Dottie during the final weeks of her life.
If the measure of a woman can be taken by the numbers of those who grieve at her passing, Dorothy Ann Riley was beloved indeed. She will be sorely missed.
Visitation is planned for 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, April 7, at Columbia Mortuary, 1010 Fourth Ave. West in Columbia Falls. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 8, at Columbia Mortuary, with burial after at Woodlawn Cemetery. A luncheon will follow burial services at Columbia Bible Baptist Church, 195 Veterans Drive, Columbia Falls.
Columbia Mortuary is caring for Dorothy’s family.