In the early afternoon of June 10, 2025, Eleanor Ruth Todd Kinyon passed peacefully into the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ, her Savior, with loving family at her bedside.
Eleanor was the only daughter born to Harold and Lucile Todd and arrived September 12, 1927 in Bozeman, Montana. She grew up alongside her five brothers on her parents’ dairy farm west of Bozeman and attended Pine Butte School. Eleanor graduated from Gallatin County High School in 1945. She enrolled in the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps training at Montana State College, graduating in 1948 as a registered nurse. That same spring she married Robert Harold Kinyon and they spent the next 72 years together as husband and wife. Eleanor worked night shifts at Lott Hospital in Livingston as she and “Harry” started their family. They had three children and Eleanor became a full-time mother, a skilled homemaker, gardener, seamstress, and cook as well as actively serving in her church and community. She loved serving people. She often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The only way to have friends is to be one.”
As her children grew into their teens, Nurse Eleanor went to work part-time at Livingston Memorial Hospital in the cardiac care unit. In 1970, Eleanor and Harry moved back to Bozeman and became active in Grand Avenue Christian Church where she had made her profession of faith as a teen. They also served in many community groups and activities. She went to work at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital as night supervisor of nursing which brought her great pleasure and purpose. She retired in 1983 and volunteered as a ‘foot-care’ nurse at Bozeman Senior Center. Harry and Eleanor enjoyed traveling in their RVs with their pups, and all of their adventures she documented faithfully in her travel journals.
Eleanor is survived by her three children, Dayle (Jim) Dick, Dr. Richard Kinyon, and Claudia (Frank) Watrous; eight grandchildren, Bethany (Jacob) Olds, Katherine Dick, Benjamin Watrous, Jennifer Watrous, Jessica Watrous, Joanne (Gavin) Lim, Thomas (Kasha) Kinyon, and Robert Kinyon; brothers, Milo Todd, Ernest Todd, and Charles Stanley (Daryl) Todd. Eleanor was also blessed with seven great-grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.
Eleanor was preceded in death by her parents, her brothers, H.W. Todd Jr. and William H. Todd, her husband, and her daughter-in-law, Mary Jane Kinyon.
We, the family, are grateful for the kind care she received at Highgate Retirement Home and Cottage over the last years of her long life. We also appreciate the care she received from Stillwater Hospice in her last months. We are especially comforted by her faith in Jesus Christ with whom she is now living her best life without end.
Services for Eleanor will be announced.
Arrangements are in the care of Dokken-Nelson Funeral Service. www.dokkennelson.com [dokkennelson.com]
