Raella Rhoades met the love of her life in Kalispell
Raella and Zip Thompson enjoyed a vacation in Paris. Here, Raella smiles back at Zip on the famed Avenue des Champs-Elyssees.
Raella Kelley was a Kalispell native who was raised in Butte. Seen here in a formal pose from the 1950s, Raella caught the eye of Rudolph “Zip” Rhoades when he was staying at the home of her grandparents in Kalispell, and later was married to him for 56 years.
In the 1953 yearbook, Zip Rhoades and Raella Kelley are pictured leading the processional at the senior dance at Flathead County High School. Zip was senior-class president and had met Raella when he moved to Kalispell in the summer of 1952. (Courtesy Jerry Siderius)
Young Raella moved to Butte when she was 5 years old, but she is pictured here in her hometown of Kalispell outside the family home at Third Avenue West. (Courtesy Willard “Shorty” Stockard)
Raella’s graduation from St. Patrick School of Nursing was featured in the Montana Standard newspaper in Butte in June 1957.
Rae and Zip Rhoades enjoyed a visit to Paris in their later years together. Here they are pictured on the grounds at Versailles. (Courtesy Willard “Shorty” Stockard)
Raella Kelley graduated in 1957 from the St. Patrick School of Nursing in Missoula, which she attended to be close to her boyfriend Zip Rhoades while he attended the University of Montana. The couple married two years later. (Courtesy Willard “Shorty” Stockard)
Raella and Zip in an undated photo. (Courtesy Raella Rhoades)
Raella Rhoades has a remarkable story of her own, and although she never achieved the prominence of her husband Rudolph “Zip” Rhoades in local lore, she helps to fill in valuable chunks of the black history of Montana.
Born and raised in Kalispell, she moved to Butte in the early 1940s when she was 5 years old. There, her mother, Laura Jane Thompson, married Elonzo Kelley, who later adopted young Raella.
She spent summers in Kalispell with her extended family, and it was there she met her future husband, and began an extended adventure in friendship and marriage. After an eight-year courtship, they began a 56-year marriage that finally ended in August, 2016, when Zip died as the result of complications from a car accident the previous year,
Raella met Zip while she was visiting Kalispell during the summer of 1952. Zip had come from Baltimore as a 17-year-old senior to finish his high school career at Flathead County High School and was staying with John and Clemmie Thompson, Raella’s grandparents. It was her uncle, Willard Thompson, who had met Zip in Baltimore and invited him to come west. Zip wowed all of Kalispell with his athletic prowess and his considerable charm, and soon enough he had started to woo the 15-year-old beauty who was visiting from Butte.
It wasn’t exactly a whirlwind romance. In fact, it was eight years before they finally tied the knot, but there was never any doubt these two were meant for each other. Zip finished out his year in Kalispell as the top basketball player in the state, and was recruited to play guard at the University of Montana in Missoula. In order to stay close, Raella enrolled at the St. Patrick School of Nursing in Missoula and began what turned out to be a long career as a nurse. She also made many long-lasting friendships of her own while there.
“I was the only black girl in school in Butte, and several of the girls I went to high school with went on to nursing school with me.”
Raella keeps in touch with some of those girls as well as other nursing students. She recently attended a reunion in Idaho, and this coming September, she plans to visit Missoula for the 60-year reunion of the 1957 graduating class of St. Patrick.
Although there are few if any references to Raella in the Daily Inter Lake’s archives, she does figure in many stories that appeared in the Montana Standard in Butte, including references to her enrollment at nursing school.
In 1956, the paper noted that that Montana Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs had awarded Raella a $200 scholarship to continue her education at St. Patrick. Others stories attest to the normal Montana upbringing she was receiving in Butte, including her membership in Brownie Troop 40, Girl Scout Troop 10, and her high achievements in duck pin bowling, piano playing and basketball. She was also a cheerleader, and recalls few if any race problems in her Montana years.
She does have vivid memories of her family and the extended family of black people across Montana who kept in close touch during the 1940s and ’50s. Because there were so few blacks in Montana, they cherished each other’s friendship and supported each other however they could.
“It was a great relationship,” Raella recalled. “When I was growing up, they had a national colored women’s association. All the black women from all the towns in Montana — Missoula, Helena, Great Falls, Butte — belonged, and my mother was the president in Butte. Once a year we would contact everyone and have a picnic in Missoula, and we would get 100 or more black people from all the state to show up.”
Raella believes that, in general, whites in Montana, were accepting of the blacks who lived in the state. She had no memory of an incident that others recall when fans in Butte reportedly shot BBs at her future husband Zip Rhoades and other Kalispell teammates while they were playing a game in Butte, and she said that Zip had loved his experience in Montana.
“Kalispell was fine. We had no problems there. I know Zip was able to go everywhere he wanted in Kalispell. I grew up in Montana, and we were never refused service.”
Raella recalled that the first time she encountered a problem because of her color was after she had moved to Baltimore.
“The first time I was refused service, I was 23 and working at Johns Hopkins here in Baltimore as a nurse. It was wintertime and I stopped at this coffee shop and they told me I would have to take my coffee outside.”
Despite experiences like that, Raella adapted to life back East easily and continued her career in nursing for 30-plus years. She and Zip both broke color barriers, and after a time in insurance, Zip was hired as the first black employee at the child-support division in Baltimore County.
During their marriage, Raella and Zip raised two children — daughter Lona Ray, who passed away four years ago of cancer, and son Rudolph Rhoades III — and Raella now has three grandchildren to enjoy.
“Zip was a wonderful provider,” Raella said proudly.
Asked about race relations today, she grows quiet, reticent, and then admits “It’s not good … It’s depressing …”
The little girl from Kalispell, who has seen so much change in the last 75 years, might not want to talk about it, but perhaps her silence says more than any words could.
Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at 758-4447 or by email at edit@dailyinterlake.com