By Jen Clancey STAFF WRITER
On the winter solstice, a crowd of about 50 gathered outside the front doors of the Bozeman Public Library as an ordained deacon read names.
Noah, Don, Theron, Erik, Alex, Pauline, Adam, Shauna, and John. These are the names of the nine unhoused individuals who died in 2024 in the Gallatin Valley. On Dec. 21, the same day as Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, the Bozeman community honored their lives and their passing through a candlelight vigil with prayers and song.
Beth Boyson, the programming librarian, said that people without homes visit the library often.
“You know, we get to know the faces and they say hello and we all chat,” Boyson told EBS. “And when one kind of disappears, I wonder what happened. Sometimes they move away. A lot of times they move away, but occasionally they pass like these nine.”
Boyson knew three of the people honored on Saturday by face. One of them, John, was a staple at the library and Cafe M across the street.
“ I just miss, I guess, seeing his face every day for years. The place seems just strangely empty without him. It’s really strange,” Boyson said.
She found the community support profound this year, and applauded the work of Deacon Roxanne Klingensmith, who led the vigil.
“They’re not faceless people,” Klingensmith said in an EBS interview after the event. “They are people with names and hearts and souls.”
As an ordained deacon of the church, she described her mission as serving the marginalized and she primarily works with incarcerated individuals. She said a lot of the people she counsels are worried about housing when they leave the detention center.
“ There are people that are losing out because housing is a crisis in Bozeman,” Klingensmith said. In a point-in-time count of homeless individuals, HRDC tallied 409 homeless people in Bozeman. The City of Bozeman reported a median home price of $730,000 in Bozeman in October 2024, which would require prospective buyers to earn $218,800 to afford average home prices.
Renting also challenges residents, and according to HRDC, a household needs to earn $100,000 to comfortably afford rent in the Gallatin Valley. Meanwhile, the median annual income of renter households is $50,829.
Ray Ruffato, funeral director at Dahl Funeral and Cremation Service said that a service like this is important to remember folks who struggle with housing.
He said that organizing end of life memorials isn’t a “hot topic” but one that is key to recognizing community members who died.
“ You know, it’s not just people who are aging or who are ill … that pass away, Ruffato said. “There’s also folks in the community struggling with homelessness and they pass away too.”
Dahl provided hot beverages and the AV equipment for the vigil, which began at 5:15 p.m. At its conclusion, Klingensmith asked anyone in the crowd to speak names of those who died while homeless that were not mentioned that day. The Greater Yellowstone Threshold Singers closed the vigil with “We Are All Walking Each Other Home” as community members held hands, some wiping tears.
