Jean Louise Buck-Philips- Bustard, 93, died Saturday Jan. 17, 2009, at the Northern Montana Care Center.
Jean will be buried in the Victor Cemetery in Victor, Mont. A celebration of her life will be held at a later time. Services and arrangements have been entrusted to Holland & Bonine Funeral Home. Jean, the daughter of a homesteading family in Montana, learned to ride and handle horses. She learned from dealing with the hardships of farm life in the mid-1900s, including her family’s famous story of searching for missing horses with her cousin Jean McDonald, only to find them in a boxed canyon the victims of horse thieves. She and her cousin crept down to the corral, opened the gate, releasing the stolen horses. They brought them home, much to the surprise and adoration of her father. As a young mother with two children she was in charge of a fire look-out tower for the Montana Forest Service. Later, during World War II she joined the Emergency Motor Corps to work for the war effort. She packed parachutes and waited for her brothers to return from the war. After raising seven children and moving to the Seattle, Wash., area, she went on to be active in her local church and went to Moscow with a missionary group when she was 77. She is survived by her sons Donald Phillips of Soldotna, Alaska, Francis Bustard of Seattle, Wash.; daughters Paula Phillips of Sacramento, Calif., Janet Phillips of Stanwood, Wash., Constance Bustard of Prescott Valley, Ariz., Marie Bustard of Watertown, Mass., and Debbie Bustard of Seligman, Ariz.; as well as numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her sister Mary Beth Steele of Polson, Mont., and brothers Milton Buck of Nevada and Clifford Buck of Red Bluff, Calif.
