Rose C. Sullivan (1920-2023)
Rose Sullivan, matriarch, teacher, traveler, died Sept. 20, 2023 at home in Butte. She was 103.

Julia Rose Conwell was born in Kansas City, Kansas on July 28, 1920. She took her first train trip west at nine months. Her parents, Edward Patrick and Callista Shay Conwell, went to retrieve luggage mistakenly sent to Red Lodge and stayed for nearly 70 years.

Her County Attorney father drove the family to Iowa nearly every other summer, alternating the routes. He wanted Rose to see as many state capitals and universities as possible. He also took her to see the inside of the Deer Lodge prison.

Rose never missed a day of class in 12 years. She edited her high school paper, the Carbon Copy, and earned scholarships to Montana State University and Western Normal College at Dillon, which she attended to save the family money. She edited the college paper.

During the summers, she worked at the Twin Bridges orphanage and Girl Scout camps in Pueblo, CO and Astoria, OR. She earned a teaching degree at Western and taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Boyd, and then middle and high school in Victor, MT, Kellogg, ID, and Valier, MT.  At 94, she was inducted into the UM Western's Education Hall of Fame and received the Legacy Award.

After World War II, she returned to Western, where she met and married a classmate who was on the GI bill, a Dillon rancher, Neal Sullivan. They left the ranch, teaching across Montana until settling in Butte, a place she had visited once in 1939 and thought "was the end of the world."

She was a lifelong committed Catholic — once denied a bed at the YWCA in Walla Walla, WA because she was Catholic. She attended daily Mass at St. Ann's Catholic Church, serving as a lector, eucharistic minister and completing all the training to be a deacon even though women could not be ordained.

At age 58, the former teacher began working at the National Center for Appropriate Technology as a librarian until she retired in 1992, then "flunked retirement,'' and returned to work at NCAT until a month before her 99th birthday.

She walked daily, played volleyball into her 60s, cross-country skied into her 70s, and every Saturday drove more than 100 miles one-way as a season ticket holder for her University of Montana Grizzlies football team. She attended her children and grandchildren's baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, cross country, wrestling, track, speech and debate and band competitions.

Throughout her life in Butte, she played duplicate bridge, was active with the Butte Retired Teachers and American Association of University Women and was a longtime board member and chair of the School Employees Federal Credit Union. She even started a family credit union to set money aside so the family could travel together.

She visited all 50 states, always stopping at the capitals and universities, as well as 25 countries and 16 elderhostels. She was fascinated by Montana's small towns and waysides. She took her kids to Lincoln once just to see the new post office. At 102, she was still discovering such gems as Wilsaw and Clyde Park, MT.

Rose found a second home in Ferndale at her daughter's cabin near Flathead Lake, where she last spent 10 days celebrating Labor Day weekend 2023. As she slowed with age, her greatest loss was her eyesight, which in the last year put an end to her constant reading. Reading novels and poetry was a habit never paused, not even for her beloved trips with her dad across Montana, which she later lamented she missed because her nose was always in a book.

She once said, "I've often questioned this idea of resting in heaven. People are active on earth. Are they going to be content in heaven to just sit around?"

We know Rose won't be.

Rose is preceded in death by her husband, Neal, son-in-law, Gene Braun, her parents and siblings Mary Hudak, Edward Conwell, Margaret Heyd, and Robert Conwell. She is survived by her children Anne Sullivan (Bozeman), Maureen (Bill) Osborne (Butte), John (Becky) (Clinton,MT), Jeanne (Steve) Cannellos (Westford, MA), Mary Gail Sullivan (Gene Braun) (Butte), Julie Sullivan-Springhetti (Jim) (Portland, OR), and Lynn Sullivan (Gary Walton) (Bozeman), grandchildren Abby Osborne (Kevin) Zach Osborne (Mara), Callie Sullivan (Chris), Maggie Rose (Chris), Christina Henchman  (Russ) , Stephanie Heller (Rob), John Cannellos (Emma), Peter Cannellos, (Melissa), Neal Sullivan (Jessi), Shay Sullivan (Bri), Joe Sullivan-Springhetti, Rose Sullivan-Springhetti, Will Wilde (Masyih Ford) and Luke Wilde, former son-in-law Tom Wilde, sister-in law Frances Conwell and brother-in-law Leo Heyd and great grandchildren Emry and Holter Albrecht, Brooke and Garrett Smith, Tenley and Kesten Osborne, Braiden and Catelyn Tschida, Hadley, Delaney and Autumn Sullivan, Rory Sullivan, John, Nate and Cora Henchman, Eliana and Madeline Heller, Stephan and Carra Cannellos, Peter and Charles Cannellos, Rose Ford, Cyrus, Prairie and Imogen Rose.

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023 at St. Ann's Catholic Church in Butte with visitation at 10 a.m. Burial at Holy Cross Cemetery with a reception at the Butte County Club to follow. Memorials may be made to St Ann's Catholic Church or Senior Solutions/Hospice of Butte, MT.