Carol Kalbach

Funeral services for Carol Kalbach, will be held 11:00 a.m. Thursday, August 29, 2024 at the First Baptist Church with Pastor James Park officiating. Burial will be in the family lot of the Bonnievale Cemetery.

Visitation one hour prior to service at the First Baptist Church.

Carol Rae (Gaines) Kalbach was born February 26, 1947 in Baltimore, MD. She passed away peacefully in her sleep at her daughter’s home in Baker, MT, due to complications from heart trouble. She was the first born daughter of Christine and Kenneth Gaines. In the next few years she was joined by two sisters and the year she graduated from high school one little brother was born who was always very special to her. Her parents were never church going people, but every Sunday they would send her and her sisters to attend Sunday School at a little Methodist church near where they lived. This is where she first heard about God. One Sunday, when she was 13 years old, the teacher was telling the class about hell. That night she had a dream about it. She remembers going into the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the tub and told God that she didn’t think he could be so cruel to send people to hell without making a way to escape. Not long after a friend invited her to attend a Youth for Christ Rally in Bethlehem, PA. This is where she heard the way of Salvation for the first time. During the invitation she felt God calling her to go forward to accept Christ. As the congregation was singing all the verses of “Just As I Am”, she gave in to her shyness and resisted the urge to go forward. After the service while all of the young people were going to the snack shack, she went to her room and cried out for God to save her. That was the beginning of living for Christ, and she never looked back. No one has been more important to her than Jesus ever since. Her mission was to tell anyone she could about Him.

She graduated from Franklin High School in Owings Mills, MD on June 13, 1965. She was undecided what to do next with her life. She had a friend that wanted her to take the preliminary test to get into nursing school, as she didn’t want to go alone. Ironically, she passed and her friend didn’t. She studied nursing at Baltimore City Hospital on a work study program. On December 14, 1967 she graduated from nursing school as an LPN. Once again she was faced with the decision on what road to take. She wanted to use her life for the Lord in anyway she could. She heard about a Christian Camp that was advertising for a nurse for the summer and that was how she ended up at Hilltop Ranch. It was there that she met a charming young man who was also working at the camp. He apparently developed quite an interest in her, finding the need to visit the infirmary on many different occasions with any minor health problem he could come up with. Turns out he was the grandson of the camp’s founder, George Palmer. They were engaged on the Valentines Day in 1968 while on a double date with their best friends, who also got engaged on the same day. Dick and Carol were married at Sandy Cove Bible Conference on June 6, 1968.

Dick and Carol began their lives of serving the Lord together. They started out working in different aspects of the ministries that his grandfather started. When God called Dick into the pastorate in 1973 she followed him to Broadus, MT, where she became a pastor’s wife. By this time they had two little boys in tow. She really enjoyed their time in Broadus recalling many stories of their time there. Life as a pastor’s wife began a series of moves through out the rest of her life as she followed Dick wherever the Lord took him next. In time, God added two more sons and two daughters. She was a wonderful wife and mother, giving up her own wants and desires to serve her family. Life wasn’t always easy for a pastor’s wife in the 70’s and 80’s, living in little towns in the west with a growing family of six kids. Dick and Carol were forced to live by faith many times as the finances ran low. Sometimes the only food in the house was cantaloupe provided by the truck farmer that lived down the road and other times there were only potatoes to eat. The family remembers one time when resources were low, that some random stranger knocked on their door handed them $100 and said God told him to give it to them. Carol followed Dick from the east coast to the west coast and when Dick retired they followed their sons back to southeast Montana, where they became very involved in their local church.

One year later she lost the love of her life to cancer. She immersed herself in loving on her kids and grandkids. Family was very important to her and she was always looking for ways to bring family together. She dedicated the remainder of her life to her beloved Sunday School class and VBS class. She had a unique gift of connecting with little ones, and her greatest joy was telling them about Jesus. She became like a grandma to many of the kids in church. Many of them looked forward to the jelly beans she shared with them. 

Carol is preceded in death by her husband Richard “Dick” Kalbach; parents, Kenneth and Christine Gaines; sister, Ruth Ann; in-laws, Willford and Ruth Kalbach; and one infant granddaughter, Joanna Joy Kalbach.

She is survived by her sister, Sherry Hastings; brother, Benjamin Gaines; sons, Don (Thu) Kalbach, Phil (Laura) Kalbach, Steve (Jessica) Kalbach, Michael Kalbach, daughter-in-law Amber Kalbach; daughters, Rachel (Ernie Melum), Sarah (David) Waterland; grandkids, Daniel (Emily) Kalbach, Elisabeth Kalbach, Nathan (Leslie) Kalbach, Esther (Micah) Flippo, Jonathan Kalbach, Jerusha Kalbach, Susanna and Jason Kalbach, Tom Melum, Caitlin, Carsyn, Cimarron and Coleman Kalbach, Sarina, Davie and Stacia Waterland; great grandkids, Elliana Kalbach and Micah Flippo; brother and sister-in-law Mike and Betty Lou Mann and many cousins, nieces and nephews.

The service will be live streamed from firstbaptistchurchbaker.com/live