Pat Hennessey, age 99 of Helena (2024)

This mist-covered valley is a home now for me,
But, my home is in the mountains, and it always will be.

–paraphrased from “Brothers in Arms,” Dire Straits

Mass for child nutrition and breastfeeding advocate Patricia Ann (Tutty) Hennessey is scheduled for noon, Thursday, June 20, the first day of summer, at the Cathedral of St. Helena. The rosary will be said at 6 p.m., Wednesday, at Anderson Stevenson Wilke and Retz Funeral Home, 3750 N. Montana Ave. Rite of Committal will be at Resurrection Cemetery immediately following the Mass. A reception is planned at the funeral home from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. with Wilbur Rehmann performing jazz music per Mom’s request. Mom’s celebration of life will conclude at the Jesters Bar, 200 N. Rodney St., in Mom’s old neighborhood because she always said Jester’s provided her with music on the weekends.

Pat died at her daughter’s house in California, in the early morning hours of Sept. 2, 2023, with rain falling outside. She was 99. She was cremated in Elk Grove by Herberger funeral home, and her ashes were blessed by the Rev. Julito Orpilla of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Elk Grove.

Pat wanted a fun funeral, so we ask that people wear bright colors to her Mass and leave the black clothes at home. She loved hats of all types. We encourage women and girls to sport their fashionable headwear at church in her honor. Mom also requested her obit mention that she played piano at Carnegie Hall. The truth was that she and a friend attended a performance there and, during an intermission, went exploring. They ended up at the performer’s dressing room and Mom plunked a tune out on a piano before heading back to her seat.

When she wasn’t at Carnegie Hall, our mother was passionately fighting to make nutritious food available to all Montana children by educating, changing laws, seeking funding, testifying before the state Legislature, and promoting government programs such as WIC. A diehard Democrat, Pat loved politics, the campaigning, the fundraising, the handshaking, but she wouldn’t mince words when she grew upset with an authority figure. She spoke truth to power long before the phrase came into vogue. She was 100 percent Irish with a father and maternal grandmother who hailed from Ireland. She held St. Patrick’s Day sacred and mourned her absence from Butte each March 17 she spent in California.

Pat loved food and she enjoyed fashion. She was proud to have been sponsored as a member of the Montana Club back in the day and she was sad when the Irish Tea Room closed. She never met a vegetable or a silent auction she didn’t like. She loved parades and cheered the loudest of anyone for each entry, even if they were Republicans because she believed everyone deserves applause on a parade route. She admonished her children to never become stool pigeons because no one likes stoolies. She also lined her kids up and showed them how to make a fist without their thumbs tucked inside. If you’re gonna fight, fight but nobody wants to be driving a kid to the emergency room with a broken thumb. Pat believed in unions and refused to cross a picket line. She was fiercely proud of the fact that she owned her own house with no man’s name on the deed thanks to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. She loved tending to her gardens and designed her own patio, created with antique bricks. She hosted many summer gatherings there, under the lilac. She planned to die in that house but moved to California when her health failed in 2019. Pat was only on temporary loan to California, though, as her heart belonged to Montana.

Pat was born July 30, 1924, in Butte, to Mary Catherine Murphy and Thomas Lawrence Tutty. She lived in her grandmother’s house on North Wyoming, across the street from the Steward Mine, and just down from the old St. Mary’s where she and her siblings attended Catholic school and Mass until the church burned in 1931. Mom proudly identified as a Dublin Gulch kid whose yo-yo skills were so advanced she could smack another child with one shot.

Mom graduated from Butte Girls’ Central High School in 1942 and joined her older sister, Marg, at St. Mary’s College in Xavier, now Leavenworth, Kansas. She declared home economics with an emphasis in dietetics as her major at Marg’s suggestion, leading to a career as a registered dietitian when the science was still new. Mom graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Mary’s in 1946 with minors in English and chemistry, and interned at St. Paul, Minn.’s city-county hospital, Ancker, from July 1946 until July 1947.

Mom returned to Montana, working at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Billings, but, at the urging of a friend, headed out to San Francisco’s South Bay for a while. She worked briefly for a Jewish hospital, but the two parted ways after she created a work schedule to accommodate Easter and planned Lenten meals of abstention, not realizing the Jewish faith does not celebrate Easter the way Catholics do. The hospital director was baffled and, frankly, so was Pat. She then went to work for Saga Corp., a rapidly expanding food service company that opened its national headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. in 1962.

Mom married Joseph P. Hennessey and had three children during her time in California. Corporate life didn’t sit well with our mom, however, and she returned to Montana as President Lyndon B. Johnson was fighting his War on Poverty. Mom was offered a job with a new health clinic in Helena, the first in Montana to provide comprehensive health services to all children. The catch was she needed to complete a master’s degree in one year and Mike was 3 years old. Mom moved to Bozeman and juggled it all, finishing her Master’s in Home Economics at Montana State University in January 1969. For her thesis, she interviewed residents of an upscale retirement community in Bozeman, the Boulder River School and Hospital, and Silver Bow General Hospital in Butte on food acceptance in institutions.

Her friend, Ruth Keiley, found her a rental on Wilder in Helena and Mom started a long career with the Children and Youth health clinic, first in the basem*nt of the old St. Pete’s Hospital, then at the top of Last Chance Gulch when that area was still being redeveloped under Urban Renewal. Mom would tell us about home visits in the dead of winter to sick families who had no electricity. Mom helped start the WIC program in Helena and signed up its first recipient, a woman who cried when she learned she would be able to provide her seven children with orange juice and second helpings of milk. Pat also helped organize Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies in Helena in the early 1980s.

Years later, after the C&Y clinic closed, Mom went to work for the Montana State Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) as the program nutritionist. After retirement, she volunteered at the Myrna Loy popping corn for theater-goers, but she never gave up her mission to ensure Montana’s children had nutritious food on their plates and babies had milk rather than sugary drinks in their bottles. She successfully lobbied and testified before the state Legislature to change laws so that breastfeeding an infant “cannot be considered a nuisance, indecent exposure, sexual conduct, or obscenity.”

Mom maintained her membership in the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics until her death and kept up with advances in nutrition through her journal subscription and online webinars. The Montana affiliate created the Patricia Hennessey Leadership Award, given annually to a member “who has helped to optimize the health of Montanans through their leadership and commitment to serving (the) profession.” Mom also kept up ties with her home parish, the Cathedral of St. Helena, watching Mass on her computer during the pandemic.

Mom is preceded in death by her parents and her siblings, Marg Caldwell, Therese “Tess” Garabedian, and Tom Tutty. She is survived by her children, Ann (Ricardo Duran) of Elk Grove, Calif., Trish of Albuquerque, NM, and Mike (Kahealani) Hennessey of Guasti, Calif.; her granddaughter, Teresa-Maria Duran of Elk Grove, Calif.; and her sister-in-law, Kay Tutty of Helena. She is survived by nieces and nephews Cathy Tutty, Tom Tutty, Laureen Tutty, Michael Tutty, Robert Tutty (Kristal), Colleen Tutty, Tim Tutty (Lisa), Maureen Boyle (Cal), and Christine Johnson (Justin); Kevin Caldwell (Carolyn), Mary Layco*ck (John), Patrick Caldwell (Mary Kay), and Therese Rodriguez; Moriarty cousins Joe Moriarty (Marcy), Mary Peterman (Paul), and the Rev. Tim Moriarty. Mom is also survived by a multitude of friends.

Memorial donations may be made to the Montana Food Bank Network, the Helena Food Bank, God’s Love of Helena, the Montana affiliate of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, or any organization that feeds people. Or contact a school district and pay off a child’s food bill. Mom strongly believed in the school breakfast and lunch program. She said families who can afford to buy their children school lunches need to support the program so that all children can be assured of a hot, nutritious meal.