Remembering Big Sky’s biggest ambassador, Jerry Pape

By Fischer Genau DIGITAL MEDIA LEAD 

Jerry Pape Sr. lived life on his terms, all the way to the very end. 

Jerry, born Gerald Pape in 1939 to legendary Chicago cop Frank Pape, died on Aug. 15 after 50 years in Big Sky as a pioneering realtor, community giant and cherished friend. He was 85. 

Jerry paved his own way in Big Sky since moving here with his family in 1973, starting one of the first real estate businesses, Triple Creek Realty, becoming a cowboy, and befriending scores of people along the way. 

“Dad was everyone’s best friend whether he knew it or not,” said Rebecca Pape, Jerry’s daughter. 

Jerry was a known extrovert who could talk with anyone—quite the opposite of his wife Becky, a self-described introvert. His youngest son, Frank, said that when you’d go to a restaurant with him, before you would even order, he’d often be sitting at another table talking to someone else. 

“He was kind of like a butterfly, flying around to the next set of flowers,” Frank said. 

He was also a notorious entertainer. Jerry told hilarious stories that sometimes defied belief, and he was a known prankster, swapping out golf balls with exploding soap balls or talking over the loudspeaker at Big Sky Resort’s Arrowhead Mall, where his realty office was located, to make people think they were going crazy. 

“He made me laugh more than anyone I’ve ever been around,” said Don Hanson, one of Jerry’s closest friends who knew him for over 40 years. 

Jerry’s friends describe him as gregarious, outgoing, and always on the move. In Big Sky’s early days, Jerry would stay up late around town dancing or playing guitar and singing in local bars like the Caboose. In his later years, he was known to drive around town checking in on his many friends, neighbors, and even the local wildlife. 

“Jerry was not one to keep still,” said Kevin Kelleher, who worked with Jerry for over 40 years at Triple Creek Realty. 

Jerry remained active all year long—a former captain of the swim team at the University of Notre Dame, he set several school records and eventually became a scratch golfer, a skilled skier and ski racer, and a proficient horseman in Big Sky. 

He couldn’t keep still at work either. If Jerry’s real estate clients wanted property near the golf course, he’d go golfing with them; if they wanted something on the mountain, he’d go skiing with them; if the property was remote, he’d take them there on horseback in the summer or on snowmobiles in the winter. 

“He figured out a way to get to do whatever he wanted while he was doing his job,” Frank said. 

That was Jerry—he always did things his way. 

Rebel with a heart of gold 

After Jerry underwent quintuple bypass surgery, his doctor told him, “If it tastes good, spit it out.” So Jerry asked his son to take him to dinner and proceeded to order everything he wasn’t supposed to eat. 

“He was not someone you could tell what to do,” Jerry Jr. said. 

Jerry Jr. likens him to Dennis Farina’s character in the 1995 film “Get Shorty,” or certain characters on the Chicago-set television hit “The Bear”—he wouldn’t take crap from anybody, and he lived unapologetically by his own principles.  

Jerry got a law degree from DePaul University that he never took the bar for; he built a school for his kids when he was dissatisfied with their options for education; and despite being a self-proclaimed “city slicker” from Chicago, Jerry became a skilled “heeler,” lassoing cows in team roping events at rodeos across the West. Jerry Jr. also describes him as a wild child. 

“He knew how to get in trouble, which is something that happens when you have a cop for a dad,” Jerry Jr. said. 

But for how willing Jerry was to fly in the face of authority, he always knew right from wrong. Sometimes that led him to pay the health insurance of a young man he met with cerebral palsy; other times it led him to walk onto the field at a middle school football game and cold-cock a father berating a kid, knocking him out at the 50-yard line. 

“He knew injustice when he saw it, and he knew what you had to do, even if it wasn’t easy,” Jerry Jr. said. 

But Jerry was a gentle man, too. 

“For a tough guy, he had a very soft heart,” said Scott Foster, former owner of Lone Mountain Sports and one of Jerry’s closest friends. 

Known as an expert horseback rider and for his ease with big, powerful creatures, Jerry had an abiding love for tiny dogs like Pomeranians and chihuahuas, and he adored children.  Jerry Jr. says he could soothe a crying baby in seconds and that he “enchanted” kids. 

“He was probably even better as a grandfather than as a dad, because he learned so many lessons as a dad,” Frank said. “He was so competitive, I think he tried to make himself the best grandfather that ever was.” 

Frank remembers Jerry showing up, apparently to take the grandkids out for ice cream, then bringing them back four hours later after going fishing or looking for bears. 

Jerry looked after the kids in Big Sky as a supporter of the kids ski program and local school system. He and Becky were very generous, contributing to the Heart of the Valley Humane Society and the Montana State University Rodeo Team as well as the Catholic Church. 

“He was generous to a fault,” Foster said. “He always wanted to help people.” 

Jerry was known for taking care of people. He sold JC Knaub, founder and CEO of Andesite Construction who describes Jerry as a mentor, his first home in 1980 when he and his wife hardly had any money. 

“He made it possible for me to have my own place, my own home, which I was eternally grateful for,” Knaub said. “I’m still there, on the property that Jerry sold us when we were broke, young, and newly married. He always helped people out like that when he could.” 

Big Sky’s ambassador 

After a half-century in Big Sky, Jerry leaves behind an immense legacy. 

“He’s one of the original locals of what Big Sky was to become,” Kelleher said. “He was there through thick and thin and took his family with him, and it was pretty amazing what they accomplished in all those years.” 

His friends and family describe Jerry as larger than life, one in a million, and a man who touched many lives simply because it’s who he was. 

“I think he’ll be remembered as the ambassador to Big Sky,” Frank said. “I think he’s the one that brought the most people out there.” 

When Jerry Jr. arrived at his father’s hospital room in the hours leading up to his passing, he saw more adult men crying than he’d ever seen in his life, “weeping inconsolably” as they left Jerry Sr.’s bedside. Jerry Jr. said his phone has been blowing up with hundreds of messages from people in Bozeman and Big Sky, as well as old friends from Chicago and beyond. 

“So many people, so rapidly, fell in love with my dad,” Jerry Jr. said. 

Jerry’s death was somewhat unexpected. He experienced medical complications while being treated for lymphoma, and his condition deteriorated rapidly. Rather than prolong his life with an indeterminate, Jerry decided to end things on his terms. 

Jerry is survived by his wife Becky and his three children Jerry Jr., Frank, and Rebecca. He will be remembered by many more.