“Not mean tough, but tough,” said daughter Gerry Sihrer, 78, of Kalispell. “If anyone stepped on her too hard, she would step back.”
Morin died of natural causes on June 6 in Kalispell. She was 95, and is remembered as a person with great perseverance and who overcame great obstacles.
Somehow, Morin still managed to find time to play outdoors. She enjoyed fishing, hiking and picking huckleberries. But she never had to wander far from her farm, nestled at the base of the Mission Mountains, to see wildlife.
Bears frequented Morin’s 40 acres. Wildlife experts coined her land “Millie’s Woods.” “Grizzly Gram,” as she is known in some circles, was a model of how humans and bears can live together harmoniously, said bear expert Charles Jonkel, president of the Great Bear Foundation and a longtime friend.
“I talk about it all the time, even today with my students (at the University of Montana),” Jonkel said. “She had a lovely relationship with the bears. She had them all trained to live with her.”
Morin wasn’t always an outdoors gal.
She grew up in Colorado and California before migrating east to Montana to live with her aunt and uncle on their ranch north of Lewistown.
She fell in love with ranch hand Joe Johnson and the couple married, moving around western Montana before settling in St. Ignatius.
Morin worked as a nurse’s aide with the Sisters of Providence at the old Catholic hospital. When Johnson died of an illness on Christmas Day in 1950, she continued to manage the farm.
Joe Johnson Jr., Morin’s son, was in eighth grade then.
“That’s when I got up at 6 a.m. for the rest of my life,” said the 71-year-old Evaro man. The boys helped their mom hay and milk cows. “When it came time to brand, she’d make sure she had plenty of help.”
Four years later, Morin met nearby rancher Joe Ladderoute. He invited the family into his home, helped raise the kids as if they were his own and introduced Morin to the outdoors. She became an avid bait fisherwoman.
For Christmas when Johnson was 13 years old, Morin bought all the kids fishing poles.
“She was about as excited as we were,” Johnson recalls.
In 1963, Ladderoute died of a heart attack. Each time a husband would die, Morin would “bow her neck and bounce back,” Johnson said.
Seven years later, Morin married again, this time to Henry Morin. For a decade, the couple operated a trout farm on their property and Morin would bring the fish to Missoula to sell at the farmers market. She would travel and sell alongside good friend Anna “Marie” Detert, who also operated a trout farm in St. Ignatius.
“In the summertime, it was hard to get a hold of those two,” said Johnson of Morin and Detert, who were best friends. “They were always up in those mountains. Mom loved those mountains. She used to spend all kinds of time looking at ’em and hiking in ’em.”
Eventually Henry Morin passed, too. But she was kept company by her children and at least a dozen grandchildren.
“She always had one pond there for the kids to fish in,” Johnson said.
One day several decades ago, Jonkel received a call from a 73-year-old woman in St. Ignatius who lived alone at the base of the Mission Mountains. A tribal game warden shot a grizzly bear that had been wounded by hunters and now the bear’s cubs were acting aggressive toward her and her grandson.
She asked if Jonkel would move the cubs from the area, and he agreed.
The first night, a 300-pound black bear wandered into Jonkel’s trap. The second night, a 350-pound grizzly bear. Third time’s a charm, and finally Jonkel captured the cubs and moved them from the area.
There were at least nine grizzlies and six black bears using “Millie’s Woods,” a name Jonkel gave to the wooded area behind Morin’s home.
Morin had a 3-foot-high wooden fence surrounding her lawn. On the other side was a trail 2 feet wide, stomped down by grizzlies. The forest was full of enough bear poop to “fill a lunch bucket,” Jonkel said.
And yet, none of the bears touched her fruit trees, raided her fish ponds or bothered her grandchildren.
“How do you live with all these bears?” Jonkel asked her one day.
“It’s easy,” she replied. “They stay on that side of the fence and I stay on this side of the fence.”
Morin was featured in two different documentaries about human interaction with wildlife. One of the films starred Emmy and Golden Globe nominated actor William Devane.
Morin drove her car until she was 93 years old. She always shopped on her own and remained self-sufficient until the very end. Throughout her life, when someone was in need - especially her children - she was there.
That’s why everyone describes Morin just as Jonkel does.
“She was a rough-and-tough, sweet ol’ gal.”
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com.
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