{"id":34655,"date":"2021-04-15T05:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uswps02.newsmemory.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/?p=34655?destination=northern-plains-independent"},"modified":"2021-04-15T05:24:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T05:24:40","slug":"thomas-firemoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/2021\/04\/15\/thomas-firemoon\/?destination=northern-plains-independent","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Firemoon"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t Thomas Edward Firemoon, 58, died April 5, 2021, in Billings.<br \/>\n\t  He was born on July 18, 1962, in Poplar to Lyle Firemoon  and Leta Fourstar Firemoon,  the youngest boy of all the siblings. Throughout his childhood, his family lived in many places, but eventually settled on the Fort Peck Reservation.<br \/>\n\t  During his school years, he enjoyed playing basketball and had many great stories to tell about when he played. He graduated from Lustre Christian  High School in 1980 and always rooted for the Lustre Lions.<br \/>\n\t  He worked at the A&amp; S Industries,  amongst other places,  before going into the military.  In 1986, he entered the United States Navy and was stationed in San Diego, Calif., serving on the USS Constellation  CV 64 (\u201cThe Connie\u201d). While aboard the aircraft carrier,  he ran the ship\u2019s store, did some cooking and would run twice a day to train for the Olympics. He did not talk much about his service because he took the military oath to heart and now has taken  it to his grave. He did tell of a fire on the aircraft carrier in August 1988 that he fought alongside his shipmates. He spent three years in active duty before being honorably discharged and moved to Navy Reserve. Being a Navy veteran was one of his proudest  accomplishments.<br \/>\n\t  In 1992, he married Marva Chapman. With this union, Buddy and Sunee were put in his life and he raised them as his own. They went on to have Sirr, Justiss and Presley. Throughout the years, he moved the family to many different  cities for his jobs. This included Billings; Missoula; San Diego, Calif.; and Williston,  N.D. He and Marva later divorced.<br \/>\n\t  He graduated with a fouryear  business administration  degree from University of Montana and was in the master\u2019s program at UofM for business administration at the time of his death. He was proud of his college experience  and wished to eventually  get his doctorate.<br \/>\n\t  He worked in management and higher-level jobs at many places throughout his life, such as Trader\u2019s State Bank in Poplar, Flying J in Billings, a temp agency in San Diego, bookkeeping for school district  offices in San Diego, Williston  and Poplar, assistant manager at Walmart in Williston  and Miles City, counselor  at Spotted Bull and other  programs of the Fort Peck Tribes.<br \/>\n\t  Some of his enjoyments included  drinking tea and coffee;  playing cards, especially Rummy, or board games. He loved reading, spending time with his family, tuning into online church services every chance he got and watching the Lakers games. He enjoyed coaching basketball as well. He coached teams from ages elementary to college during his life, with the Buffalo Chasers  being the last team he coached.<br \/>\n\t  He is survived by his children,  Buddy Smith, Sunee Erickson,  Sirr Firemoon, Justiss Toavs and Presley Sears; four grandchildren; sisters, Velda  Stewart, Ingrid Firemoon, Lyla Law and Joy Reddig.<br \/>\n\t  He was preceded in death by brothers, Jr, Vincent and Dawson; and sister, Melda.<br \/>\n\t  Funeral services were held Monday, April 12, at the Clayton Stevenson Memorial Chapel in Wolf Point. Interment  followed at Greenwood Cemetery. Clayton Stevenson Memorial Chapel of Wolf Point was entrusted with the arrangements. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"news-destination":[14],"news-source":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34705,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34655\/revisions\/34705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34655"},{"taxonomy":"news-destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-destination?post=34655"},{"taxonomy":"news-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-source?post=34655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}