Resting in peace

ST. IGNATIUS — In every sense, the Krantz Memorial Cemetery is a family endeavor. Reminiscent of frontier cemeteries throughout the west, the Krantz Memorial Cemetery began as a means of upholding a regional tradition brought from Tennessee, where every family had their own final resting place, located on family land.
The cemetery is situated just off Highway 93, near the top of Ravalli Hill, just outside of St. Ignatius. It was a logical location for the family, whose homestead lie miles up the Pistol Creek drainage. Because land up the drainage was not practical to get to year-round for such a use, Frank Krantz, son of homesteader Benjamin Krantz, dedicated five acres of his land for the family plot. Sadly, it was Frank’s four-year-old son Jesse who would be the first family member buried there.
The little boy was lost to diphtheria in 1942, and his family fenced a small bit of land around his grave to keep out grazing cattle. The family patriarch followed his grandson seven years later.
Over the years, the fenced-in area has grown, doubling in size in the last ten years, according to Patty Krantz.
Patty is granddaughter to Benjamin Krantz, who homesteaded the area, moving with his young wife and their five children from Tennessee to Idaho to Montana in the early years of the 1900s.
Benjamin first came to the Mission area to help his cousin, a minister, build the first Methodist church in St. Ignatius.
He liked what he saw, and found the land more favorable to ranching and farming than Idaho, where he’d left his fledgling family.
Benjamin selected a homestead up the Pistol Creek drainage, where Patty’s father would later swing across the creek on a wire strung from bank to bank.
Benjamin went for his family by train, which at the time ran passengers to Ravalli, Patty said. Adarine, known as Addie, came with her five children by that train to Ravalli, to begin their new life as Montanans.
Benjamin and his bride went on to have nine more children, including the first set of twins born in the St. Ignatius hospital. “That was my dad,” Patty said.
Her dad, “Soup” Krantz, and his slightly younger brother “Syrup,” were born Jan. 4, 1915. The boys couldn’t say the letter s very well, the story goes, and in an effort to get them to learn the youngsters were given the nicknames “Soup” and “Syrup,” Patty said. With her characteristic double-entendre humor, Patty said of the nicknames, “Soup was Soup after that, but Syrup’s name never stuck.”
Soup and Syrup became two of the fourteen original Krantz children. The clan has grown over the last ninety or so years.
“I couldn’t tell you how many Krantzes there are,” Patty said. “There’s hundreds of them.”
Not all Krantzes past are buried at the family cemetery, though. “Some moved out of the area,” Patty said, and some married into other families, and were buried with their spouses elsewhere.
But the land still remains, still in family hands, still available for that final journey everybody must take.
“My sister was buried out there two years ago,” Patty stated. “Two years ago April. She died 4-5-6.”
It was quite a loss for Patty, who was very close to her older sister.
“We fought all the time,” she said, “and then we’d get together and not fight forever.”
Patty cared for her sister the last few years of her life, helping ease the discomfort of lymphoma as she could. She misses her sorely.
“It was Cathy’s birthday in July,” she said of the summer after her sister’s passing. “I was at the cemetery crying and crying. A car stopped, they had some trouble, and the gal heard me crying and came up the hill. I told her about my sister, she said she was so sorry.”
That little kindness helped some, but you can tell the family still cares for those they’ve lost. Jesse’s grave is adorned with plastic flowers, though the small boy died over 60 years ago. His marker is clean white marble, about the size of a large dictionary. It rests in the center of the family plot, overwhelmed by peony bushes and the flowers that never fade.
Other markers are similarly loved. Plastic rabbits rest by one, bundles of everlasting blooms by another. A bouquet of pink rosebuds rests near the metal marker of baby Marjorie Joyce, who had but one small day on earth. Her too-short visit was in 1945, and still the family looks after her grave.
“Aunt Barbara used to carry water to the cemetery to water the grass,” Patty said, before electricity and a well were put in place to ease that job.
The Krantz family resting spot has an expansive view of the Mission Mountains, and the hills that climb from Pistol Creek. The setting bears the truth of the words upon one of the stones: “May we walk in beauty, may our eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset, … until we come to you.”