Hamilton man celebrates 100th birthday

Thorvald “Thor” Ulevog, a resident of Sapphire Lutheran Homes in Hamilton, celebrated his 100th birthday on June 28th, surrounded by family and friends. Following is the story of his life, in his own words:

I was born June 28, 1925 in Great Falls, Montana. We moved very soon to Shelby where my father was a Prohibition agent. My parents were both Canadians from Saskatchewan, although my father was born in Norway. He went on a mission to gather information about smugglers floating booze down the Milk River in flat boats. He never returned and it was assumed the smugglers found out about him. Since my mother was always hoping for his return, she didn’t remarry for a long time, so she sent me to Saskatchewan to live with my Norwegian grandparents. I lived there on their farm for nearly four years until my mother remarried. My stepdad lived just outside Bozeman where we had several goats, about 500 chickens, six acres of potatoes, an acre of strawberries, hay and some other vegetables. Later we got rid of the goats and got a couple of cows. Sourdough Creek ran right at the end of our pasture so I spent summers swimming and fishing and winters ice skating when I wasn’t helping out on the place. I had several dogs but my constant companion was a collie named Bruce. Also, I had a few cats, one of whom was named Henry. We never had enough kids around to play organized sports and no smooth spots to play basketball but we did play sandlot tackle football without any safety gear, and also work-up softball where when you were out you played outfield and gradually worked your way up to batter again.

My stepdad went to work up at Fort Peck Dam. He started drinking and only sent home $10 a month. My mother had to sell the animals and most of the land to exist and when I was 11, I started working in the hayfields driving team on an overshot stacker during most of the summer. When I was 14 and 15, I worked in the woods skidding logs with a team. When I was 16 and 17, I worked on some small cow ranches during the summer and drove a bundle rack during threshing time.

In December 1942, I joined the Navy and trained as an aviation radio/radar operator and gunner. I served in patrol bombers in the Aleutian Islands where we raided the Kurile Islands north of Hokkaido, Japan, and then in the Philippine Islands. I was discharged in 1946 as an Aviation Radioman 2nd class and then worked on ranches and in the woods. I re-enlisted in the Army in 1949 and ended up as a Staff Sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division in Frankfurt, Germany. It was there I met my wife and we were married 65 years when she passed away in Discovery Care Centre this past March.

When I was discharged I continued to work in the woods and also in the Anaconda smelter and on ranches in the Deer Lodge Valley. I started taking correspondence courses and got a job on a seismograph crew in eastern Montana and then as a survey instrument man and then party chief in North and South Dakota and Colorado. We had to move about six times a year  so I applied with the Civic Aeronautics Commission (later FAA) as an electronics technician in Pueblo, Colorado. With schooling at the FAA Academy I learned to maintain the nav/aids, communications, radar, and digital facilities. I even maintained the old mountaintop light beacons. I worked in Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma, California, Utah and Nevada.

After attending several colleges and correspondence courses, I finally got my bachelors degree at age 45. I worked in management my last 10 years with FAA. I retired in 1981 and went to work as a systems engineer at Vandenberg AFB in California on missile tracking systems. I stayed there for the first two MX missile launches and then went to Hill AFB in Utah as a senior engineer and then as Principle Engineer working with aircraft and cruise missile tracking systems. My last four years I was in different layers of engineering management. This was my ideal job if it hadn’t been in Utah.

When I retired completely, we bought an acreage and built a house north of Victor. We both liked fishing and I liked hunting and gathering firewood. After a few years I had a bout of heart failure and when I got out of the hospital, my wife had sold the place and one of the nicest horses I ever had. We bought an acreage with lots of brush and timber near Ronan and built a house. We lived half a mile from the highway where the mailbox was. My wife would walk there to get the mail. One day just as she got the mail she saw what she thought was an Angus cow trying to climb a tree. Then she realized it was a bear. She ran screaming to the two nearest neighbors’ houses and nobody was home. She ran screaming for me up the road and when she got there I kind of scoffed at her experience. I was splitting wood and had my axes soaking in a bucket of water. I went to the other side of the house to change a sprinkler, looked back and there was a bear drinking out of the bucket. We both ran into the house, looked out a window and there was the mama and her cub grazing on our lawn. A couple mornings later we found a lot of bear tracks on our deck and that was enough for my wife, so we sold the place and bought a place o na  couple of acres north of Polson. We both loved that place and I must say I like it much better up there than I do down here.

Because of my Canadian roots and my wife being German, we traveled to the German stores and restaurants in Calgary, Vancouver, Kimberly and the Kutenai Lake area, and to Leavenworth, Tacoma and Portland. We also took quite a few trips to Germany. My wife liked to play the slots in Nevada so I’d time it with a rodeo because for me gambling is one of the most boring things you can do.

Unfortunately, it got to the point where neither my wife nor I could care for the large house and the very large yard so, since our daughter lived in Victor, we had a house built a couple of miles from Corvallis in 2002. My wife developed dementia and I was unable to care for her so we moved her into Discovery Care Centre in 2015. I visited her every day except if I was contagious or when she was quarantined. The worst day of my life was when I lost her last March.

We have two daughters, one of whom, Lore, lives in Victor. We attend church and bible study at Grace Lutheran Church and she comes to bible study and country music here at Sapphire Lutheran Homes.She had her own country band in North Carolina. Our other daughter lives near Grand Junction, CO, where they run a business and also breed Paint horses. Her husband played safety with the Chicago Bears from 1977 until the end of the pre-season in 1983. He got picked up by the Buffalo Bills and played there through that year and half of 1984 when he broke his leg. With all his other injuries that was enough and he is suffering for those years now. My wife really loved going to the games. We went to games in Chicago, Buffalo, Denver, San Francisco, LA, Oakland, and San Diego. We even got to see O.J. Simpson and Joe Namath in their fading years.

My happiest memories are having a wife and two daughters who I dearly love and having a wonderful savior in Jesus Christ. I spend my time now trying to get my computer and my cell phone to obey me. I enjoy reading and have more than 300 books, nearly all of which I’ve read although, since my cataract surgery, my eyes get tired after a couple of hours. I also enjoy going to bible study, watching the country music on Sundays, and going for rides. I would like to have lived in Charlie Russell’s era and he would be my favorite person to meet.