Obituary - Phyllis Deaun Purdy

Phyllis Deaun Purdy of Gildford, Montana, died on January 14, 2025 of natural causes in her home of 64 years, in the company of her children.

Born to homesteader parents Carl and Gladys Lee on June 16, 1931, along Highway 2 as they made a futile attempt to reach the hospital in Havre, she was a life-long farm girl and then farm wife, and one of the nicest people you could ever meet. 

She graduated from Gildford High School in 1949 and on September 23, 1951, married Robert Purdy of Kremlin. After a brief time in Billings, they returned to Gildford and eventually took over the Purdy family farm. They eventually divorced. 

Born into a musical family, she was an almost entirely self-taught pianist of note, playing for community events since high school, and for decades the Gildford and KG schools and the Gildford Baptist Church. Her last school and community gigs were to accompany a music teacher of wide, decades-long experience who called her the best accompanist she’d ever had. A lifelong reader, by her example, taught her kids to love books and took some pride in the fact that she read War and Peace with two little kids running around. Although she would always bring the latest issue of Mad Magazine home from the store “for the kids” and would no doubt read it when she had the house to herself. 

For several years she was a substitute rural mail carrier and assisted at the Gildford senior center. A Norwegian stoic, she faced all challenges, including the macular degeneration that took away both her reading and her needle work, without complaint. 

She is survived by her children, son Todd Purdy of Gildford and daughters Taryn Purdy of Helena and Jana Mital of Great Falls, son-in-law Tom Mital, and nephew Brad and nieces Pam, Valeri, Vicki, Kristi, Sande, and Julie. She was preceded in death by her son Scott and infant son Danny, brother Robert Lee, and former husband Bob. 

A date for the service has not been determined.   Please visit Phyllis’s online memorial page at https://www.hollandbonine.com to send a card or leave a message of condolence for her family.