Alpha Hanson, 104, died of natural causes December 11, at the Northern Montana Care Center in Havre MT. Funeral services will be held at the Holland & Bonine Funeral Home at 2:30 p.m., Tuesday, December 18, with burial in the Hill County Cemetery. Alpha was born May 30, 1908, in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin, to C.K. and Anna Helen Helgeson Hanson. She was the sixth of ten children, one of whom died in infancy. In 1911, after a fire destroyed their farm home, C.K. Hanson came to Montana and homesteaded at Old Scobey. His family joined him on the homestead in 1912. Alpha and her siblings spoke Norwegian but soon learned English as they attended country schools in the area. Alpha graduated from Scobey High School in 1925. She attended Concordia College and Moorhead State University (now Minnesota State University) in Moorhead, Minnesota. Returning to Montana, she taught in rural schools in Sheridan, Roosevelt, and Daniels County. Later Alpha worked as a live-in companion to elderly people. She loved children and her face always lit up when the family children visited. She moved to Havre in the 1960s. Her family attributes her long life in part to her love for dandelion greens and rhubarb. Alpha was baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran Church. She was a devout Christian and a devoted student of the Bible, filling the margins of her Bibles with notes. She loved listening to hymns. She treasured her ties to her extended family and kept in touch with many of her 24 nieces and nephews, all but one of whom survive her. Alpha was preceded in death by her parents, her sisters Marian, Gladys, Eleanor, Edna, and Kathryn, her brothers Herman, Carrol, and Vic, and a niece, Betty Fee Waldbauer. Memorial donations may be given to Northern Montana Care Center.