Elizabeth Ann Webb

It is with great sorrow we say goodbye to Elizabeth after her graceful and year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. “Beth” passed away peacefully at home on Feb. 17, 2018, surrounded by the arms of her family and the hearts of many loved ones.

Beth was born in Los Angeles in 1964 and moved to McMinnville, Oregon, at the age of 7 near her grandparents, and many family members. It was there where the love of nature was instilled in her and she began learning about fishing, hunting, camping and wildlife from her Grandpa Ed. Her teen and early adult years she lived on the Oregon Coast, which she loved deeply, and her favorite memories were fishing with her stepfather on his boat off the Depoe Bay harbor.

It was also there where Beth’s career began at one of the first battered women’s shelters in the state of Oregon, and later she became a children’s witness advocate. Her deep love for helping others became her lifelong profession and passion. After some tough life hardships, Beth bundled her three children in the car and arrived in Kalispell in January of 1996 to begin a new life. I was here in the Flathead where then she claimed she met her first “Angels of God’s Country.” Her absolute love for Montana and endless stories of kindness of the people of this community made this her final home. Beth began her profession in Montana at Columbia Falls High School in the Special Education Department. Her genuine love of children was valued as she worked the next 12 years in many schools in the Flathead and some of her earlier students may remember her as Miss LaMontage. While working and raising her amazing children, she graduated college at Flathead Valley Community College with her human services and chemical dependency degree, and then graduated from the University of Montana with honors in social work. Still following her passion, she worked at the Abbie Shelter, and later in various local positions where she touched the lives of many homeless, addicts, and at-risk teens.

The past four years she also began teaching watercolor classes in the community and, at the onset of her illness, her next venture was opening a local art studio where her dream was to offer free art classes to locals and teens in crisis. Beth believed that art, and a loving heart “healed,” and she often talked of the magic she saw through her careers.

Elizabeth Webb is survived by her husband, Darrin Webb; children, Amber Lime, Casey Webb, Michelle Naldrett and her husband TJay, and Sean Webb, all of Kalispell, , and Will Webb of Knoxville, Tennessee; grandchildren, Avic and Kylan Lime, Tristen Evert and Paul and Zarek Naldrett, and Anastasia Elizabeth Webb, all of Kalispell. She is also survived by her mother, April Howard, of Kalispell; father Richard James, and his wife, Susie, of Paso Robles, California; brother, Bob Thornbrue, of Portland; grandmother, Peggy Current, of McMinnville; and numerous aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins.

Family, friends and others whose lives that Beth has touched are invited to her celebration of life that will take place from 4 to 8 p.m. on the 20th of March at the Bohemian Hall in Whitefish.