John Robert Stensrud

A memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, at O’Connor Memorial Chapel. John Robert Stensrud was born in Maddock, ND on June 9, 1934, to Alvina Smerer Stensrud and Horace Stensrud. The Stensruds moved to Shelby, Montana when John was 10. He soon got a job bringing cows home every night for a dairy farmer. He received a dime a day for this service. Later he took the job of Bell Hop at the Rainbow Hotel. He found he could make many dimes per day if he stayed vigilant and helped the Rainbow’s patrons with their luggage and many other activities generally making himself as useful as possible. When he was 14, he scored a real job with a paycheck at the Sugar Shack a full-service restaurant that was also in the bus depot. He was hired as a bus boy, dishwasher, and swamper but it wasn’t long before he was cooking and making the daily pies. John was always proud of using his first paycheck to purchase a mix master for his mother. The family moved to Great Falls when John was 15. Over the years, John worked at many jobs. He cooked in, and once owned a restaurant. He was a meat cutter (where he lost the tip of one finger), he worked as a used car salesman, and later, operated a used car lot in Black Eagle with his friend. They called it Ill Eagle Auto Sales. He worked for a Body Shop repairing car bodies a skill he later used when he rebuilt wrecked cars. He drove truck and worked as a mechanic repairing all kinds of vehicles including big trucks, skills he learned from his father. At one point not long after moving to Great Falls John drove a delivery truck for Meadow Gold from Great Falls to the Hi-Line. He lost that job when they discovered he wasn’t 16 yet. John obtained a chauffeur’s license when he got his first license. He said it cost 50 cents to get a regular license and only another 25 cents for the chauffeur’s license. He figured he might as well have the chauffeur’s license; it might be useful sometime. In those days a test was not required. In 1957, John met and married Chris. They had two boys, Robert Allen Stensrud (deceased) and John Jesse Stensrud of Fernley NV, They divorced in 1961. John was working as a mechanic and shop foreman for Milwaukee, a company head quartered in the Chicago area. Milwaukee was in Montana to build the missile sites. John’s job was to keep the fleet of trucks running. When the job was done in Great Falls, they moved on to Chamberlain, SD. John went with them but usually managed to be sitting in the Cimarron Club (one of John’s favorite places to dance and have a few drinks) by midnight Friday night. When the job was done in South Dakota, two of Milwaukee’s higher ups offered John a position at their headquarters in Chicago. He turned it down. Said he didn’t want to live in a big city and preferred to live in Montana. John met his 2nd wife, Ruth Barkley, in the winter of 1961. John was dating a girl that was living with Ruth’s sister when Ruth came to live with her sister.They became good friends and often danced together. During the big flood of 1964, Ruth and her sister were flooded out of the house they lived in. John helped them move first to a house across the railroad tracks and later to his parents’ home when they feared the flood was going to get the house they had moved into. John and Ruth were married in September of 1964. They both often told people they married their dancing partner. They have two daughters, Crystal Stensrud Anderson of Havre, MT and Sandra Stensrud of Fernley, NV. In 1965, the couple moved to a 4 plex with a shop building in Black Eagle which they later purchased. John rebuilt wrecked cars here and later he and his friend ran their used car lot from the shop. In 1973, John went back to driving truck. He worked for several of the small trucking firms hauling produce from California and Arizona to Canada. These trips were weekly rounds. John was always very helpful to fellow truckers on the road. If he came across another truck in trouble with mechanical problems, he would stop and help them get going again. Mostly he did this for other Great Falls truckers he knew, but even if he didn’t know the driver he would stop to see if he could help them. He had a real knack of being able to fix a truck so it could at least get home to be repaired. He was also known to overhaul a truck engine in an open parking lot using only the small amount of tools he could carry on the truck if it was his truck or one belonging to one of the Great Falls truckers. In 1986, John purchased a used truck from a former boss and began his own trucking company. He had not had the truck very long when it was stolen from the parking lot of a motel in San Antonio, Texas where he and his family were staying while he waited over the weekend to unload his freight. At that point he purchased a new truck. Before long, he had 3 trucks on the road. John and Ruth moved to a place along Belt Creek in Armington. After various mishaps with drivers and the trucks he sold the trucks and went back to doing mechanic work in his shop later moving back to Black Eagle. A few years later they moved to Great Falls. John’s health wasn’t very good for several years and it had recently deteriorated rapidly. John passed away quietly in his sleep early Tuesday morning, December 28, 2021. In addition to his wife, Ruth; and the children mentioned above, John Jesse (aka Jay), Crystal and son-in-law Randy Anderson, and Sandi; John is survived by 5 grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; and 2 great-great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son, Robert Allen Stensrud; 1 grandson; and 1 great-granddaughter.