Jean Merlin (Tendrup) Tracy

Jean Merlin (Tendrup) Tracy, 84, of Libby passed away peacefully at her home on May 31, 2017.

Jean was born May 16, 1933 in Balsam Lake, Wisconsin, to Agnes and Stanley Tendrup, the oldest of seven siblings. To family and friends, she was known throughout her entire life as “Susie.” She attended Balsam Lake public schools and upon graduation enrolled in the Wisconsin State College at Superior, receiving a bachelor of science degree in 1955, and elementary schools teaching certificate in 1956. During college at Superior Jean met her future husband, Gene Tracy. They married in 1955.

Following Gene’s return from overseas deployment in the army, the young couple moved to Spring Lake Park, Minnesota, to start a family. However, Jean’s heritage was firmly in Wisconsin, and she was resolute that their children be born in the Dairy State. Accordingly, all three — Lisa, Mike and Donn — were subsequently delivered just across the state border in St. Croix Falls.

Jean and her family left Spring Lake Park in 1963, moving to Centerville, Minnesota. Soon afterward she began teaching kindergarten through fourth grade students for the Forrest Lake Public School District in the town of Scandia. The family again moved in 1973, to Amery, Wisconsin, whereupon Jean continued a daily commute to Scandia. She taught there for more than 29 years, retiring in 1995.

Following husband Gene’s retirement, in 1999 the couple headed west to Libby. Both developed an affinity for Montana earlier in their lives, Jean while spending a summer during college working in Yellowstone National Park and Gene when employed with the Forest Service near Libby at about the same time. The entire family also vacationed in northwestern Montana on a number of occasions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At her last home in Em Kayan village, Jean settled into gardening, sewing, landscaping and enjoying the company of friends, her Jack Russell terriers and other pets.

Jean was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice and often sang around the house, especially when performing her Sunday morning ritual of baking bread. She also had a remarkable “green thumb” and found much satisfaction in planning, sowing and harvesting an annual garden. Jean’s lifelong commitment to healthy living includes fond recollections by her children from growing up of their mom’s daily home exercise regimen always performed to music, most memorably the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Her Balsam Lake senior high school classmates voted Jean “The most likely to advance into politics,” a distinction that most friends would find curiously at odds with her unassuming demeanor. She retained a lifelong interest in current affairs, was a devoted reader and proud of Wisconsin’s progressive political lineage of Lafollette, Proxmire, Nelson and Feingold.

Besides raising her own children, by far Jean’s greatest passion in life was being a school teacher. The hundreds of students who had the good fortune to pass through her classrooms were individually educated not only in the three R’s, but perhaps even more importantly, formatively had a devoted mentor who typified the best of human virtues. Jean will be remembered as an exceptionally kind and gentle soul of exemplary humility, charity, selflessness and compassion, qualities that were plainly apparent to everyone she met and all that knew and loved her.

Jean was preceded in death by her husband Gene, her parents, and her sister Betty Livingston.

She is survived by daughter Lisa Robertson of Missoula, sons Michael of Homer, Alaska and Donn of Troy; granddaughter Molly Birtwistle and grandson Charles Birtwistle, daughter-in-law Caroll Mahoney, sisters Shirley Lee, Joanne Jacobson, Ruth Halverson, Helen Tendrup, Sandy Hardina and brother, Lynn.

Private family services are being held. Arrangements are by Schnackenberg & Nelson Funeral Home in Libby. Online condolences and memories may be shared at www.schnackenbergfh.com.