James Haldeman Armstrong Sr., 87
Our father was born Nov. 18, 1929, in Northampton, Massachusetts, to the Rev. James Newton Armstrong Jr. and Louise Storms Armstrong.
He passed in his home on Dec. 20, 2016, after a prolonged decline from Parkinson’s disease and a bout with lymphoma. Frontier Hospice assisted in his care and comfort.
He was the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, his father having attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City during the Reinhold Niebuhr era. He spent his childhood on Long Island, growing up in Southampton, New York, enjoying the woods, the dunes and ocean, swimming, clamming and duck hunting.
After graduating from Princeton University, he entered medical school in New York City where he first experienced the devastating impact on women’s lives who had sustained abortions from untrained, ill-equipped providers in clandestine settings. Later during his career as a physician and healer, and after the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, Dr. Armstrong incorporated safe, legal abortion work into his family practice in Kalispell, until his retirement nearly 35 years later. In addition, he found great satisfaction from delivering the babies of women he had himself delivered years earlier. He was recognized for his work by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana in 1995, receiving the Jeanette Rankin Civil Liberties award for Human and Reproductive Rights. He also served on the board of directors of the National Abortion Federation and received its meritorious recognition Burdick Award, some years after his office, that he shared with Susan Cahill, Physician Assistant-Certified, Master of Social Work, (PA-C, MSW) was destroyed by arson in the early winter of 1994. Dr. Armstrong gained favorable decisions in legal suits before the Montana Supreme Court, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court defending women’s reproductive rights.
Dr. Armstrong entered the Navy in 1959 and was stationed at Patuxent River Air Station on Chesapeake Bay where he worked among four of the original seven astronauts, including Jim Lovell and Pete Conrad. “The Right Stuff” portrayed some of his experiences there. Seeking further medical training he completed a residency at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania, before traveling cross country in the family station wagon to Montana with his wife, Dotty, two infant children and an English setter puppy in tow. The family home on Kalispell’s east side was chosen in part because of its close proximity to Flathead County Hospital and Hedges School. Kalispell had 24 physicians in 1964, and once the hospital moved to Buffalo Hill and another 100 physicians had arrived, Jim was often seen riding his bicycle to his office along the golf course, and up the hill for noon or evening rounds at Kalispell Regional Hospital. House calls were part of his practice, arriving equipped with his black leather bag and affable, compassionate bedside manner.
Dr. Armstrong chaired numerous hospital committees, was president of the Flathead Medical Society and in 1980 served as president of the Montana Academy of Family Physicians. He was a six-year trustee of Montana Blue Shield (before “the merger”), served as a 20-year board member for the Flathead Valley Chemical Dependency Center and as a founding board member for the Western Montana Mental Health Center. He was medical director for the Wilderness Treatment Center for 17 years. He was a Kalispell School board trustee throughout the 1970s. As a member of the Presbyterian Church, he served as an elder and then as moderator of the Presbytery of Glacier in 1986, before resigning his church membership, critical of the “creeping fundamentalism” within American churches. Shamanistic studies and the Society for Scientific Exploration occupied his time in retirement, as well as raising and training yet another bird dog to seek out, point and retrieve pheasants, grouse and ducks throughout Montana. He climbed many of Glacier’s peaks and skied much of Big Mountain, out of bounds of course, before the expansion.
Jim Armstrong was preceded in death by his parents, who died in their Kalispell retirement home. His wife of 39 years, Dotty, passed of dementia 15 years after their divorce, and his companion P. Leslie Walker, Ph.D., also passed of dementia, living into her 90s. Jim’s eldest sister Deborah Sadowski, formerly of New York and Washington, preceded him in death, and his younger sister, Mary Lou Langdell resides in Shelburne, Vermont.
Jim’s daughter, Maria “Ridie” Storms Armstrong, resides in Carbondale, Colorado, and is employed by the Aspen Ski Company. Her eldest daughter Michela Millette lives in Portland, employed with Keen, and youngest daughter Katherine Millette attends North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota.
Jim’s son, James “Jamie” Haldeman Armstrong Jr., resides in Missoula and is a physician with CostCare clinics. His daughter Sarah Armstrong lives in Missoula and Phoenix, and son Eric Armstrong lives in Missoula. Both are blossoming students.
A remembrance of life will be at 10:30 a.m. April 22 (Earth Day) at the Shining Mountains Center for Spiritual Living in Kalispell.
The family requests that any memorial gifts be directed to the Abbie Shelter and violence free crisis line, Citizens for a Better Flathead or the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana.