Vera 'Pat' Marie (Campbell) Berg

Vera 'Pat' Marie (Campbell) Berg

Vera "Pat" Marie (Campbell) Berg, 101, a homemaker and farm wife who worked during World War II on an assembly line making airplane engines and as a ball-bearing inspector, died of natural causes Thursday, Jan. 31, at a Havre care center.

Services are at 1 p. m. Wednesday, Feb. 6, at First Lutheran Church in Havre, with burial in Highland Cemetery. Holland & Bonine Funeral Home of Havre is in charge of the arrangements.

Pat was born on Sept. 3, 1911, in Shrewsbury Township, Pa., to Joseph Campbell and Ermina Snell. She was the first of two daughters.

Pat finished her eighth-grade year in Proctor, Pa. She started her freshman year of high school, but didn't finish. She moved to Williamsport, Pa., to get a job.

While waitressing, she met her first husband, Wesley Bohart. They had one child, Sarah.

In 1932, the couple hitchhiked to Havre to follow Pat's father and his brother, George Campbell, who had homesteaded north of Havre. The couple had less than $5 in their pockets and only the clothes on their backs. After being in Havre a month, Wesley went back to Pennsylvania and the two divorced.

In 1934, Pat married Clayton Jolly. They owned a dance pavilion at Sandy Creek, just north of U. S. highway 2, and had two daughters, Marlene and Shirley. When the dance pavilion burned down in 1936, the family moved to Kremlin where they again ran a bar. Pat helped run the bar until their marriage failed.

In 1941, after the United States entered World War II, Pat moved back to Pennsylvania. She worked on an assembly line in an airplane factory, building airplane engines. She later worked civil service for the government and was transferred to Meriden, Conn., to be an inspector in a ball-bearing factory, and later still to inspect airplane parts in a factory in New Castle, Del.

In October 1945, Arthur Berg, whom she had met in Kremlin and had been corresponding with during the war, came back from Europe, where he had been stationed. They were married and returned to Kremlin to farm. They were married 66 years.

In 1976, Art and Pat incorporated farms with their daughter, Marlene and son-in-law, Charles Melby. Art and Pat continued to farm until they moved into Northern Montana Care Center in June 2008.

Pat was an active member of the Kremlin Lutheran Church, the church women's group and the quilting circle.

Pat was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Art; sister, Velma Campbell; sons-in-law, Charles Melby and Gene Montgomery; and a great-grandson, Joshua Rambo.

She is survived by her three daughters, Sarah Montgomery of Williamsport, Pa., Shirley Watte of Warburg, Alberta, and Marlene Melby of Kremlin; sisters-in-law, Delores Berg of Kremlin, Margaret Throckmorton of Great Falls and Margaret Berg of Bozeman; 13 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren and 14 great-great grandchildren.

Memorials in Pat's honor may be made to the Kremlin Lutheran Church or the Northern Montana Care Center Activity Fund.

Condolences may be posted online at hollandbonine.com and/or gftribune.com/obituaries.