Beloved Mother, Grandmother, Aunt and friend, Kerin McCarver passed away March 14, 2024, after a brief illness. We miss her love, warm smile and quick wit, her eye for beauty and her many artistic endeavors. She enjoyed meeting and talking to people, and was a wonderful quilter, gardener, poet and pie baker. She deeply loved and was loved by her family and close friends.
Kerin was born in Glasgow, Montana May 26, 1936, to Walter and Florence Johnson when Walt was working as a Fort Peck dam construction engineer. She was the oldest of three daughters, with sisters Marilyn (Jordan) and Catherine (Burnham), and grew up on a ranch between Thompson Falls and Trout Creek, Montana. She married her high-school sweetheart, Frank Kemmerer, and moved to San Diego, California, where Frank served in the Navy. After they moved back to Montana both attended Montana State College in Bozeman.
The couple lived in Bozeman for 20+ years. Frank and his Navy partner used their mechanical expertise and started M&W Repair to work on diesel and auto engines. As they invested and built the M&W business, Kerin financed the household working as a professional seamstress, including doing alterations at Angionettes ladies’ dress shop on Main Street while raising their two daughters, Theresa and Penni. Kerin was involved in 4-H and the Montana Extension Service, plus the Bozeman United Methodist Church.
The M&W business grew and expanded to include auto sales and trucking, eventually adding M&W GMC and M&W Machine in Three Forks. With so much time spent commuting to Three Forks, Kerin and Frank moved there and built their dream home incorporating energy efficient technologies and a greenhouse. They were very active in the local community and the Three Forks United Methodist Church, where Kerin arranged the colorful flowers that graced the sanctuary for Sunday services and Frank built the church elevator. They would create an M&W float for the summer parade, and they built wonderful Christmas displays. Frank tragically passed away from cancer in December 2000, a day after turning 65.
After Frank passed away, a gardening club friend, Orville McCarver started calling. They had known each other from the extension service in Bozeman, and he had also lost his beloved spouse a few years before. They fell in love and married in June 2003, enjoying travel, gardening and community service until Orville died in late 2007.
After outliving two husbands, Kerin fell in love twice more, with her adventurer, Ray Arnold, who passed away in 2012, and with her cowboy, John Paloni, who passed away in 2023.
Kerin moved to assisted living at The Springs Living Bozeman in 2022. She is survived by daughters Penni (Ken Abbott) Kemmerer and Theresa (Rod) Adams, Granddaughters Christina Almsted and Kerin Leigh (Henry Stheeman) Abbott, and great granddaughters River Almsted and Lenora Auld, as well as her many beloved nieces and nephews.
