by Marjorie Smith Sally Newsome, '01' Hist, is literally living in the midst of her major. With quiet pride she shows me around her new home, which she and her sister, Sandy, recently inherited. Since Sandy lives and works in New York City, Sally is in the process of buying her sister's share of the small, well-kept house in one of Bozeman's oldest neighborhoods. Sally was a one-year-old when her family moved into the house next door, and Sandy was born after the Newsomes settled in Bozeman. Just to the north lived two elderly sisters, Helen, EX '31, and Doris MacQuarrie, who befriended the two little Newsome girls from the moment they caught Sally staring through the fence, watching the MacQuarries host a picnic in their backyard. These days, when Americans seem always on the move, it is heartwarming to find close friendships formed and nurtured over two decades. It seems even rarer to find friendships stretching across several generations. Helen and Doris MacQuarrie were born in Butte but moved to Bozeman with their parents, Lottie and Arthur (Mac) MacQuarrie, when it came time for Helen to start college. The MacQuarries began their Bozeman sojourn in the Hamill Apartments on East Main Street, and after several moves, eventually bought the cozy bungalow on South Bozeman Ave. "Helen was a natural historian without ever meaning to be," Sally Newsome says. "She kept meticulous scrapbooks and labeled and dated all her photographs. I have boxes of them." She leads me to the room in the basement where she has stored much of the MacQuarrie memorabilia. "I'm going to go through it all, eventually," Sally says, "but it will take me years." She shows off a framed, hand-tinted photograph of Helen in the early 1930s as an attendant in a friend's wedding. Nearby, in perfect condition, hangs the beautiful pale green gown -- which Helen made herself -- which she is wearing in the photograph. Sally strokes the dress fondly. One of Helen's scrapbooks covers her time at Montana State College from 1929 to 1931. Sally showed the scrapbook to one of her history professors who alerted Kim Allen Scott, the MSU library's archivist. Sally then made a gift of the scrapbook to the library. "It is remarkable in the completeness of Bozeman ephemera of the time," Scott says, explaining how a college girl's scrapbook can become a valuable resource for future scholars. While the MSU archives are rich in deposits of academic papers and university administrative history, sources that portray ordinary life in days gone by are also important in understanding history, Scott says. Helen MacQuarrie's scrapbook contains not just photographs but everything from dance programs to MSU songs. "Because Helen was the older sister, she was always my special friend," Sally says, "while Sandy and Doris were close." As the Newsome girls grew up, their lives reflected the MacQuarrie sisters' in some ways. Doris had left Bozeman and joined the U.S. Army as a WAC, while Helen remained at home, working in a local doctor's office. Doris spent 25 years working in San Francisco before she retired and returned to Bozeman to help her sister look after their parents. And while Sally followed Helen's example and enrolled at MSU, her sister Sandy went off to the East Coast and graduated from Smith College. . . . .

"Their parents died at home, in this house," Sally says. "And many years later, so did Helen and Doris."

As to why neither sister married, Sally says she believes their parents felt strongly it was their daughters' duty to look after them in their old age. But who was to look after Helen and Doris in their later years?

Enter the young Newsome sisters next door. Although their parents divorced and sold the Bozeman Ave. house, Sally and Sandy remained close to Helen and Doris. Neither of the MacQuarries ever had a driver's license, so the Newsome sisters made themselves particularly useful as chauffeurs.

"I learned so much from those women," says Sally. "I really feel I will always have the values that Helen and Doris instilled in my sister and me." She acknowledges that her interest in history may have been born of her connection with two women whose lives were a bridge into the early years of the 20th century. Certainly her current job -- as assistant director of activities at the Birchwood assisted living center at Aspen Pointe, a Bozeman retirement community -- flows directly from her experiences with the MacQuarrie sisters.

Helen MacQuarrie died in 1997 at the age of 88. Sally Newsome and Doris MacQuarrie cared for her up until the end, and with the help of the hospice organization, were able to keep her from spending her last days in the hospital. "Sandy didn't get back to Bozeman until Helen was in a coma. She came rushing in from the airport, gave me a hug, and then went home for a shower. When she came back, she sat with Helen, talking, telling her she was home. Nobody knows how much someone in a coma hears." Just a few hours after Sandy's arrival, Helen slipped away. Sally says she was inconsolable when Helen died. "But Doris taught me how to handle it. They knew these things, those women. They knew how to deal with death as well as how to enjoy life."

Four years later, when Doris was 88, Sally went through the same process again, and Doris also died in the little house, under Sally's care. "Not that it was any easier for me, but thanks to Doris' teaching, I understood the process."

Now, in the house Helen and Doris MacQuarrie left to Sally and Sandy Newsome, Sally shows off an elaborate set of dishes in the china closet, the purchase receipt with its ridiculously low price tucked under the bottom plate. "Aren't these wonderful? They needed lots of dishes -- they loved to entertain."

Sally has begun work on a master's degree in history at MSU, but decided to take a semester or two off. Her current top priority is putting together an eight-piece blues band she hopes will travel and entertain around the area. "I'd really like to make music the center of my life," she says.

That, and carrying into the 21st century the legacy entrusted to her by two ordinary, 20th century women who formed an extraordinary friendship with the two little girls next door.