Whitefish, Mont. ? Dr. Chester Hope was late for everything  late coming back from his lunch hour, late seeing his patients and late getting to City Council meetings.

“It got to be a pretty big joke with all of us,” Mayor Andy Feury recalled. “I’d say, ‘We’ll just go ahead and start, Chet will be here in a few minutes.”‘

So to honor Hope, who was shot to death last month, the council unanimously passed a measure calling for meetings to be held 10 minutes late.

“During his entire nine-year term,” the ordinance says, “Chet Hope was rarely on time and typically arrived at the council meeting approximately 10 minutes after it had begun. … As a lasting memorial to Chet Hope, the City Council shall convene its regular monthly meetings at 7:10 p.m.”

Hope, 56, and his wife, Carol, a teacher, were shot to death in their home Feb. 10 by their eldest son, Jared, 24, who also killed himself. He had been diagnosed with manic depression.

More than 1,000 people filled the small-town baseball stadium Feb. 16 for a memorial for the parents and son alike. All three, Feury said, were victims of “a disease that took three lives.”

“Chet was a remarkable man,” fellow council member Turner Askew said. “He fit more life into a day than you could imagine, but the clock wasn’t something that bothered him.”

Hope even ran late for appointments with his patients. His nurses had to remind him that others were waiting.

“He was a good doctor, not just trying to push you through,” said Feury, one of those patients. “He wanted to know what was going on with you and would spend a fair amount of time with you in his office.”

Askew said he hopes the city will find a more substantial way to honor the doctor.

“I think we could do a little better than that for Chet,” he said. “We’ll come up with something.”