Albert V. Bellusci, 98, passed away on April 3, 2026, just days shy of his 99th birthday. His was a life well lived, centered on the things that mattered most to him: the family he loved, the friendships he kept, the community he served, and the work that left its mark on the Missoula community he called home.

Albert was born April 8, 1927, the youngest of nine children born to Albert and Beniamina Bellusci, immigrants from Mongrassano, Calabria, Italy, who came to America in the early years of the twentieth century.

Albert later wrote about those early years: “I was born on Howell Street on the North Side. Our family moved to 819 Stoddard when I was two years old. We were Northsiders, and I attended Whittier School. I spent nine years in Whittier, having repeated the first grade in order to get my English mastered. The school requested my parents to speak English at home so as to widen my exposure to the English language. I often chuckle thinking about the broken English spoken at home.”

The all-stone home at 819 Stoddard, built by his father, a mason by trade, would become the Bellusci family home, where so many of the family’s memories were created. For Albert and his brothers and sisters, it was the house that anchored the Bellusci family in Missoula and remained an important part of their family history long after they had grown and left home. Today, known in Missoula as “the Stone House,” it is still standing almost 100 years later. The house that once held this large Italian immigrant family would eventually take on a new life, serving the Northside community for generations to come.

Albert grew up surrounded by his five brothers, George, Lou, John, Frank, and Sam, and three sisters, Kay, Ann, and Marie. Being the youngest of nine earned him the nickname “Babe,” a name that stayed with him throughout his life. To his family and closest friends, he was simply Babe. To us, of course, he was just Dad.

Dad’s childhood was framed by two events that shaped his generation: the Great Depression and World War II. Growing up during the Depression taught him the value of hard work and making do with what one had. And with four of his older brothers serving during World War II, one of whom would not return home after being lost at sea aboard the USS Liscome Bay, patriotism and service became deeply rooted in him at an impressionable young age.

But young Albert had a dream.

He wanted to be a cowboy.

As a freshman, Dad dropped out of high school for half a year to work herding sheep at the Missoula Stockyards, thinking that was the life he wanted. After experiencing the reality of working outdoors through a cold Montana winter, he apparently began to see the attractions of a warm classroom. His stint as a cowboy lasted just six months. He would return to Missoula County High School and graduate in 1946.

Football became an important part of Dad’s high school years. A standout athlete at Missoula County High School, Dad was an all-state quarterback and, under Coach Ed Chinske, helped lead the Spartans to three consecutive state championships from 1943 through 1945.

Dad often reminisced about his years in high school playing football. He remembered not being home for Thanksgiving because the Spartans were playing outside of Missoula for a state championship on Thanksgiving Day. More than the victories themselves, he always remembered the feeling as a young man on the field with the crowd roaring all around him. At that age, he would often tell us, it felt like being on top of the world. He would remember those years fondly for the rest of his life.

Those years also gave Dad something that would prove even more lasting than football. Through school and sports, he formed his closest friendships. His friendships with the Malcolms, the Nashes, the Jourdonnais, the Walterskirchens, and the Kramises remained strong throughout their lives, with the Malcolms and Nashes eventually becoming godparents to his children.

During the summers of 1946 and 1947, Dad worked as a smokejumper, an experience that would remain one of the great adventures of his young life. Smoke jumping had begun in the United States only six years earlier, and Dad was among a group of young men recruited from Missoula County High School, including several of his classmates and football teammates. Earl Cooley, one of the two men who made the nation’s first experimental smoke jump in 1940, came to the high school to recruit them. Over those two summers, Dad made 14 jumps - five on fires and nine in training. He spoke throughout his life with enormous respect for the men who trained and mentored him, particularly Cooley, Wag Dodge, and Fred “Hank” Brauer, who encouraged Dad to continue his education. More than 70 years later, Dad would still describe his smoke jumping experiences as the “the chance of a lifetime”.

Dad never lost his fascination with those years or with the airplanes that carried the young smoke jumpers into the Montana wilderness. Among them was a DC-3, now named Miss Montana, from which Dad made a fire jump near Plains in August 1946. More than seven decades later, the restored Miss Montana and the Museum of Mountain Flying became an important connection to that part of his life again. Dad eagerly attended museum events and smoke-jumper gatherings, and in 2025, at the age of 98, joined other senior smoke jumpers aboard Miss Montana for an honor flight marking the 85th anniversary of smoke jumping. In another connection between Dad’s aviation years and the engineering career that followed, he engineered the foundation and floor of the hanger that would eventually become the Museum of Mountain Flying at the Missoula airport.

After graduating in 1946, Dad stayed in Missoula to attend Montana State University (now the University of Montana) on a football scholarship that his close friend Roy Malcolm had helped him secure. Dad felt bad about leaving after Roy had helped him get the opportunity, but by then he had begun to realize that football was not going to be his future. Once again following in the footsteps of his older brothers, who had also chosen engineering, Dad decided that his future lay in the same profession. In 1947, he transferred to Montana State College in Bozeman (now Montana State University) to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.

In 1948, while still a 21-year-old engineering student, Dad entered the U.S. Air Force Aviation Cadet program. He trained with the 3525th Training Squadron at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, beginning a connection with military aviation that would continue, in one form or another, for nearly nine years.

Dad later returned to Montana State College, where he continued his engineering studies and participated in Air Force ROTC. In July 1952, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve, and that September entered active duty.

Dad served on active duty from 1952 to 1954 as an Armament Systems Officer. After extensive training at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, and additional training at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, he was assigned to the 95th Armament & Electronics Maintenance Squadron at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, Texas, then an important Strategic Air Command installation during the early years of the Cold War. His work involved the sophisticated armament systems of the military aircraft stationed there. Dad was awarded the National Defense Service Medal.

Unbeknownst to Dad, his future wife, Beverly, was also living in El Paso at the same time. Their paths would not cross there, though. It would be six years later, back in Missoula, before they would finally meet.

Dad was honorably released from active duty in September 1954. With his mechanical engineering degree from Montana State College completed, he returned to Missoula and began the engineering career that would occupy the next six decades. Those years away would be the only time in his life that he lived for any length of time outside Montana. For Dad, there was never anywhere else he wanted to be. Missoula was home.

His return to civilian life did not, however, end his military service. Dad continued in the Air Force Reserve, was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1955, and in 1956 joined the Montana Air National Guard, serving as an Armament Systems Officer with the 186th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Great Falls. He was honorably discharged in June 1957, bringing to a close a military association that had begun nearly nine years earlier when he first entered the Aviation Cadet program as a college student.

Dad began his engineering career in Missoula with William “Bill” Walterskirchen Sr., who gave him his first opportunity as a mechanical engineer. Walterskirchen became an important mentor to Dad during those early years, helping him establish himself in the profession he would practice for the next six decades. Looking back on that first step in the timeline he later wrote of his life, Dad simply noted “Good move.” He remained with Walterskirchen from 1954 to 1957.

In 1957, Dad joined General Engineers, working with Maury Guay and Walt Parock until 1960.

And then came what Dad himself considered an even better move.

At the beginning of 1960, Dad met Beverly Chivers Campbell through their mutual friend Bob Heyer, who also happened to be Mom’s mailman. One of their first dates was a ski outing with friends. Mom had agreed to go despite the small problem that she didn’t know how to ski. Once they reached the top of the hill, Mom had little choice but to make her way down, falling repeatedly along the way and arriving at the bottom bruised but apparently having made enough of an impression on Dad that he wanted to see her again.

After dating for only five months, Dad and Mom married on May 28, 1960. Mom had been widowed and was raising Roger, five, and Susan, two. Dad’s own notes about this moment say it better than we could: “A real good move. What luck. Became instant father to Roger and Susan.”

Dad raised Roger and Susan as his own. Shortly before he and Mom married in 1960, he bought a small home in East Missoula and began remodeling it for his new family. As the family grew, he added to the house to make room. Looking back on those years, Dad wrote, “Our family continued to grow with the birth of sons Brian, Mark, Michael, and Chris. (The Gods smiled on us.)”

Dad had always dreamed of owning a restaurant, and in 1967, he and Mom made that dream a reality with "The Shanty." Dad remodeled and transformed an old neighborhood house into the drive-in, next-door to their home in East Missoula. Mom managed much of the day-to-day operations of what began as a true family enterprise. With the children, relatives, friends, and neighbors all pitching in, it soon became a popular gathering place in East Missoula. Among its specialties was Dad‘s own creation, the “Tiger Tail”, an orange sherbet and vanilla soft-serve swirl that became a local favorite, particularly among his young kids, who were undoubtedly The Shanty’s most loyal, if least profitable, customers.

Eventually, the East Missoula house became too small for the growing family. In the late 1960s, Dad and Mom purchased 10 acres in the Marshall Grade area at the base of Mount Jumbo, where Dad began building their new family home. He did much of the work himself, largely by hand, working evenings and weekends and often continuing well after darkness had fallen.

Dad had always admired the craftsmanship of his father, who had learned the trade of stonemasonry in southern Italy. Dad drew on his father’s tradition, constructing a large rock fireplace in his new home. But Dad had his own approach. Rather than chiseling and shaping each stone to fit, as his father would have done, Dad worked with the natural shapes of the rocks. He often laughed when remembering the day he proudly brought his father out to see his handiwork. Grandpa studied the fireplace carefully and quickly offered his blunt assessment: “We cover that type of work up!” Dad would tell that story for years, always amused that the father whose craftsmanship he so admired had been less than impressed with his son’s interpretation of the family trade.

In 1971, the family moved into the home where their children would grow up and where Dad and Mom would spend the rest of their lives.

Dad’s engineering career would ultimately span more than six decades. In 1960, he established A.V. Bellusci Mechanical Engineering & Consulting, where his brothers Lou and John would later join him. He continued the practice until 1968, when he disbanded the firm and joined the U.S. Forest Service, Equipment Development Division.

During his seven years with the Forest Service, from 1968 to 1975, Dad put his engineering skills to work developing practical solutions to problems in the forests and rangelands of the West. His work included developing methods for sagebrush control and other equipment and techniques for managing forest lands. It was work well suited to Dad’s inventive nature. Throughout his career, he was always looking for a better way to make something work, and that creativity would eventually earn him a U.S. patent for one of his inventions. The friendships from those years lasted long after Dad left the Forest Service, and well into his later years he continued meeting former colleagues for coffee at Ruby’s Café.

In 1975, Dad returned to private practice and established Energenics Engineering & Solar Structures. He would continue working as an engineer for another 42 years, finally retiring in 2017 at the age of 89. By then, his engineering career had spanned 63 years, from 1954 to 2017. Over those years, Dad provided engineering for countless homes and businesses throughout the Missoula area. Many of them still stand today, carrying his work quietly within their structural framework and leaving a lasting physical reminder of a career spent helping build the community he always called home.

Dad practiced engineering in a very different way from the computerized world of today. He drew his engineering plans and technical drawings by hand, never making the transition to computer-aided design. With their precision, detail, and careful draftsmanship, many of those drawings were almost works of art in themselves, reminiscent of the technical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.

One of Dad’s later projects brought that artistry together with his engineering work at Draught Works. The technical drawings he created for the brewery were so distinctive that Draught Works incorporated them into its corporate identity, reproducing Dad’s hand-drawn engineering work on its beer cans and delivery trucks. For an engineer who had spent a lifetime creating his drawings by hand, it was a fitting and very special honor—a recognition not only of his engineering, but of the craftsmanship behind it.

But Dad’s connection to Draught Works did not end when the engineering work was finished. He kept going back.

Friday afternoons became a ritual. Dad started the tradition of bringing salami from the Italian deli to share with his friends at Draught Works, while he enjoyed his pint of root beer. As Dad became less mobile, his close friend Doug Stewart often made sure he got there and home again, helping Dad continue a Friday tradition that meant so much to him. It is a wonderfully simple picture of Dad in his later years: sitting among friends in a place he had helped create, surrounded in a way by his own handiwork, sharing some salami and enjoying a pint of root beer.

Dad’s contribution to Missoula, however, extended well beyond his work as an engineer. Giving back to his community was always important to him. He was a founding member of the East Missoula Lions Club and served for many years on the board of the Salvation Army, where many Christmases found him standing outside Buttrey’s, ringing the bell in the Montana cold. He served on the Bonner School Board, including a period as chairman, and was a founding member of the Bonner Development Group. On the committee, Dad saw the MCHS' Golden M Club through its honor celebrations as well as finding a home for the trophies and memorabilia at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. He was also the swine superintendent at the Western Montana Fair. For Dad, giving back to the community that had given him so much was simply part of life.

For us, however, Dad’s legacy is found in things much less tangible than the buildings he helped engineer or the organizations he served.

It is found in the values by which he lived: family, hard work, service, community, and friendship. But perhaps the greatest gift Dad and Mom gave us was something even more fundamental. Together, they created a home that was solid and secure, giving their family a sense of stability even when the world around us did not always feel that way.

Above all, there was unconditional love. We never had to wonder whether Dad was proud of us. He was genuinely interested in our lives and in whatever path each of us chose, and our accomplishments, regardless of how big or small, seemed to bring him as much happiness as they brought us. He and Mom were always in our corner, encouraging us, advocating for us, and believing in us. Whatever we were doing, Dad made us feel that it mattered, simply because it mattered to us.

If there is one thing for which we would most like to thank Dad, it is that: for loving us unconditionally, for believing in us, and for giving us the security of knowing that, whatever happened in the world outside, we always had a home and two parents who were in our corner.

Dad’s life stretched across an extraordinary period of American history. He was born to immigrant parents before the Great Depression, came of age during World War II, and lived to see a world transformed in ways that would have been almost unimaginable when he was a boy on Missoula’s Northside.

Yet through all that change, some things remained remarkably constant.

Family mattered.

Work mattered.

Friendship mattered.

Community mattered.

And Montana would always be home.

The little boy who dreamed of being a cowboy may have grown up to become an engineer, but the cowboy dreams never entirely disappeared. There remained in Dad, an independence, self-reliance, loyalty, and deep attachment to Montana that stayed with him throughout his life.

And in the end, perhaps the best measure of Dad’s 99 years isn’t simply everything he accomplished.

It is the people who will miss him.

It is the buildings that still stand.

It is the friendships that lasted a lifetime.

But most importantly, it is his family that carries his story forward.

Albert is survived by his children: Roger (Lisa) Campbell, Beavertail; Susan (Ben) DeMers, Missoula; Brian (Cathy) Bellusci, Bothell, Washington; Mark (Darcy) Bellusci, Anacortes, Washington; Michael Bellusci, London, United Kingdom; and Chris Bellusci, Missoula. Grandchildren include: Derek (Kelly) Campbell, Angela (Ralph) Campbell, Chelsie Rauch, Kylie Rauch, Cory (Austin) Pearce, Katie (Nate Merklinghaus) Bellusci, Cameron Bellusci, Tara (Chris McKnight) Bellusci, Benjamin (Margaret) Bellusci, Megan Bellusci, Connor Bellusci, and Pluto Bellusci. Great-grandchildren include Mikayla (Dewey) Campbell, Dylan (Jasmine) Campbell, Beverly Campbell, Kaitlyn (Bryce) Campbell, Noah Pearce, Gwendolyn Pearce, and Jasper McKnight. Great-great-grandchildren include: Stetson Campbell, and Dylan Campbell Jr. He is also survived by his brother-in-law, Stan (Betty) Chivers of Rochester, New York, and many nieces and nephews.

Albert was preceded in death by his loving wife of 61 years, Beverly Ruth Bellusci.

A graveside service will be held Monday, September 14, at 11:00 a.m. at Missoula Cemetery, followed by a gathering with family and friends at the family home on Marshall Grade. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to the Museum of Mountain Flying or a charity of their choice.