Dorothy Watson Meschter

Dorothy was born at St. Joseph Hospital in Deer Lodge on April 22, 1923, the youngest daughter of Stewart H. and Kathryn Kolbeck Watson of the Lower Flint Creek Valley. She attended a country grade school near Hall and graduated from Drummond High School in 1941. She then attended Western Montana College of Education in Dillon from which she was assigned before graduating to a teaching position in Townsend to make up a wartime teacher shortage. She later taught second grade and music in Philipsburg, where her Christmas programs were a feature of the holiday season much anticipated by the whole community. In later years she loved reading about her former students in the Philipsburg Mail. Dorothy married Daniel Meschter, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, in the Hall Methodist Church on Sept. 1, 1951. They lived in numerous places in the Western states before moving to Phoenix in 2009 to be near their only child. She was a lifelong lover of music ranging from Broadway shows to grand opera, jazz and swing. She sang in many church choirs and community choruses and in the 1970s served on the board of directors of the Cheyenne, Wyo., Symphony. She is survived by her husband Daniel; daughter Catherine J. Meschter; sister Eileen Rollins of Bellevue, Wash., and two nieces, Sheryl Flick of Tampa, Fla., and Barbara Spivey of Bellevue. She was preceded in death by her parents and a sister, Lucille Braach of Missoula.Cremation has been completed. A commitment service is planned for the Valley Cemetery near Drummond later this summer.