Patricia Elizabeth Gregory

Patricia Elizabeth (Tisdale) Gregory, 94, died on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015, in St. John’s Lutheran Home in Billings, Mont.

She was born Oct. 9, 1920, in Grand Forks, N.D., to Dr. Harry and Jesse Tisdale, of Scots/Irish and Shetland Islander descent. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Dakota at age 20, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She then moved to Chicago to earn an MBA at Northwestern University. While working as the first female buyer at Marshall Fields, she met and married David Gregory, MD, and then supported him through his abbreviated internship. When he deployed to the Philippines at the end of WW II, she returned to UND with their first child to teach home economics, emphasizing the micro-economics of domestic survival for students who grew up in the Depression era.

She moved to Glasgow in 1948 when Dave found his calling as a small-town GP. She devoted her considerable talents to raising five children and to helping raise up her community, as people did in those days, in roles from den mother to school board member.

Closest to her heart was her work on the Governor’s Committee on Mental Health, which she commenced after her child, Tommy, was born disabled. She told of sitting with three different governors as Montana laws on mental health institutions, special education and child abuse were written.

Somehow surviving an aggressive cancer, and then the loss of her daughter, Mary, to a similar disease, Pat went to work at the front desk of the Glasgow Clinic. She brought her characteristic efficiency and acumen as well as her pleasing smile and friendliness to the task.

Though slowed in later years by the after-effects of aggressive treatment for her rare cancer, she and Dave often traveled the country to visit their scattered children and grandchildren. They also visited many interesting corners of the globe when they weren’t relaxing at their cabin at the Pines.

She left her new home overlooking the Milk River Valley only after the loss of her husband, Dave, in 2005. She lived at Mission Ridge and later received kind and skillful care at St. John’s in Billings. She made several good friends and enlivened countless conversations wherever she went.

She kept her firm belief and abiding faith in her savior Jesus Christ through the end of her life.

She was predeceased by her husband, Dave; a daughter, Mary Margaret; and sons, Thomas George and David Lee.

Survivors include David’s wife, Marge, and their two sons; a daughter, Patricia Ann Gregory Tillotson and her two sons, and a daughter; son John Richard Gregory, MD and his wife, Mary Beth, and their two daughters; and son James Tisdale Gregory and his wife, Nancy, and their two sons and a daughter; 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

Plans will be made for a family memorial this Spring. Interment will be in the Highland Cemetery in Glasgow. Memorials may go to St. John’s Lutheran Home in Billings, 3940 Rimrock Road 59102.

Bell Mortuary in Glasgow is handling arrangements.