Rosalie Ostendorf, 98, wife of Theodore Ted , mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, passed away peacefully at home on Thursday, December 8, Funeral Services will be held at 1 pm, December 20, , at the First Presbyterian Church of Miles City, with a reception to follow downstairs.
She joined her older sister Ella Mae at the family home on 45th and Aurora and they were soon joined by brother George. Although Rosalie was baptized at the downtown First Presbyterian Church, as a child she walked to Sunday School at the Lutheran church across the street on Aurora. An important family tradition was walking 5 miles to the outdoor Easter Sunrise service with her dad carrying picnic supplies.
Rosalie recalled her life growing up in Seattle in the Depression fondly. As a child, she recalled Boeing Company Christmas parties where her father worked as an engineering draftsman and the dolls that Mrs. Boeing handed out to the girls. Her father was laid off during the Depression and eventually returned to work at the Bremerton Shipyards. One recurring childhood story was the traumatic end of her neighborhood by the construction of a highway diagonal which took many houses of friends and neighbors and even cut off the porch of their 3-story Dutch colonial house.
Rosalie graduated from Lincoln High School in where she was the sports editor on the newspaper staff and played violin in their orchestra. George peeled potatoes for clam chowder and she delivered meals to people in their cars. Together they bought a Plymouth they named Betsy who was later immortalized in a poem by her mom. During the War, Rosalie volunteered for a USO committee which provided respite trips and dances for the military personnel. After high school, she found UW classes to be much too large, so she switched to secretarial school.
Before finishing she tried a variety of jobs including a bucker at Boeing opposite the riveter ā so she was very nearly a Rosie Riveter! One of the many friends she made while working as a secretary was Hortense Ostendorf. After the war, Rosalie decided she still wanted to be a home ec teacher and enrolled at Western Washington College in Bellingham in September Many of those friendships lasted a lifetime with letters, phone calls and visits over the years.
