Well-known Kalispell physician Louise Swanberg died unexpectedly Tuesday at Kalispell Regional Medical Center. She was 65.

Swanberg practiced internal medicine at Woodland Clinic in Kalispell, a clinic started by her father, the late Dr. Alfred Swanberg. She was affiliated with both North Valley Hospital and Kalispell Regional, and had been on staff at Kalispell Regional since 1984.

News of her death shocked her patients, colleagues and friends.

“I felt like someone had punched me deep in my stomach,” said John Hendricks, a grade-school classmate of Swanberg and good friend.

“She was the smartest kid in our class, even at that age,” Hendricks said, recalling first-grade days at Hedges Elementary School. “She was always brilliant. The fact that she’s gone means this world just isn’t as good a place as it was.”

Hendricks and his partner Judi Fenton — both patients of Swanberg — had invited Swanberg and her husband, Dr. Tom Colyer, to a Christmas party planned this weekend. He still has the cellphone text from her that says, “Yes, we’d love to come; tell us what to bring.”

Swanberg was well-respected among her patients and colleagues and was known for going the distance in patient care.

Jeanne Garner, a registered nurse who worked with Swanberg at Kalispell Regional and was one of her patients in recent years, said she couldn’t find enough glowing adjectives to describe Swanberg.

“She was so kind and concerned, and very professional,” Garner said. “She was extremely intelligent and had a terrific business mind. The nurses looked at her as a terrific diagnostician.”

Garner recalled that when Swanberg and her husband returned to the Flathead Valley to raise their children, she was one of the first female doctors in the area.

“She had to maintain a certain professional attitude with these men seeing a woman [doctor] around for the first time, and she was able to gain their respect,” Garner recalled.

Swanberg stepped in to care for her father’s patients at Woodland Clinic after he died in 2003, and Garner pointed out how she “gave such personal care” to each patient.

Swanberg also spent time working in the family’s cherry orchard near Lakeside.

“All of her patients knew when cherry harvest was underway, she’d be overseeing it,” Garner said.

Swanberg had a hand in bringing the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana program to Kalispell this year. The program was launched as a cooperative effort among Montana universities and hospitals to build a base of family physicians who are compassionate, clinically competent and motivated to serve patients and communities in the rural and underserved areas of Montana.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.