Alfred Wayne Jewett

Alfred Wayne Jewett was born on June 13, 1926, to Alice and Leon Jewett. His mother passed away in 1930 and his father passed away in 1939. He then went to live with his sister and brother-in-law, Agnes and Wayne Massie. During high school he helped milk 40 cows, harvested crops, and handled a can milk route on weekends to give the drivers a day or two off.

After graduation from Cheter High School, where he played trombone and was active in the forces, he joined the U.S. Maritime Services. He took his boot training at Sheep’s Head Bay in Brooklyn, New York. While there he applied for radio operator school at Gallups in Massachusetts and was accepted. He graduated in June 1945 with a 2nd FCC telegraph license. He sailed in the Pacific, after the war was over, he enlisted for 18 months in the Air Force.

He became an instructor at Scott Field, Ill., in teletype maintenance, air traffic control. Grades came easy in the technical school and he made grade staff sergeant in 15 months.

After his tour of duty, he farmed his parent’s farm for four years. He then took a job at Boeing Airplane Company in Seattle, Wash. He worked as a jig builder on the XB & YB 52 (world’s largest bomber). When they were going into production on the B-52 he quit and went to work for Dr. Eugene Lacroix, a Arabian horse breeder and cattle rancher in Ellensburg, Wash. After a year he went to work for Boeing on the XM99 interceptor missile. In 1959, the company asked him to go to Long Island, N.Y., for a few weeks; he didn’t get back to Seattle until 1964, at which time he quit and bought a bar/motel cafe in Stanley, N.D.

He married Ramona Jundt in 1974. In 1975, they sold the bar and Al went back to work for the Boeing Company on the Minuteman Missile project in the central United States. When that was completed he went to work for Boeing at the Hanford Nuclear Plant No. 2. He worked for Pullman Power Products, Kaiser Engineering, and Georgia Power Company, until retiring. In 1993 he came over to Flathead Lake and helped build a Super Good Cents home.

Al is preceded in death by his sisters, Arlene and Agnes; and a daughter, Denise. Al is survived by his wife, Ramona of Sandpoint; his daughters, Robin of Chicago, Ill., Renee of Ft. Meyers, Fla., and Teresa of Sandpoint; and five grandchildren and five step-grandchildren.