Funeral Service: Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. in the chapel of Stevenson and Sons Funeral Home in Forsyth
Burial: will follow in the Rosebud Cemetery in Rosebud, MT
James Arnold Jim Tuma, the tree surgeon of the City of Trees, passed away at the age of 55 on August 1, 2009 at his home in Forsyth.
Jim was born in Billings, MT on July 24, 1954. He attended elementary school in Rosebud, Forsyth, and Colstrip, MT and in Ithaca, NY. He spent some of high school in New England, ND but graduated from Forsyth High School with honors in 1972. He was his senior class president. Jim furthered his education with courses and study programs in Oklahoma, Norway, and at MSU-Bozeman, working on degrees in Botany and Fish and Wildlife Management. Although he worked as a reclamationist for the Colstrip mines for 25 years and as a ranch manager for the Youngbauers of Forsyth, his passion was for trees and he spent the last years of his life working as a certified arborist in and around Forsyth.
We will miss Jims caring personality and unique way of looking at and sharing life. He loved to be outdoors; working on trees, collecting fossils and gems, fishing, hunting, or camping. He had a language all his own (yikers!) that we will never forget. Above all else, Jim loved to be with his family.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Gene A. and Irene Peace Tuma and his brother Craig W. Tuma, all of Forsyth. He is survived by his brother Lane A Tuma of Billings, his may-as-well-be brother Marty Eep-Flay-Araneous Mendenhall of Forsyth, his son and daughter-in-law Aaron A. and Sonja E. Tuma of Glendive, and his ball-of-light grandson, Roman Gene Tuma. Donna Dickinson of Billings and her family, Earl and Jan Peace of Bozeman and their family, and the Tuma relations in the Cut Bank area make up the extended family we know about.
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