Montanan, Spring 2009

montanan

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River runs through it UM’s Proximity to World-Class Rivers Hooks Prospective Students

One-on-One with Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina ’93 KBGA Dials into Digital Broadcasting

The Magazine of The University of Montana |

SPRING 2009

conten

spring 2009 Volume 26

Number 2

PUBLISHER

Rita Munzenrider ’83

EDITOR-in-chief

Brianne Burrowes ’07

DESIGNER

PHOTO editor

EDITORIAL TEAM

CONTRIBUTING

EDITORS

ADVISORY BOARD

Eileen Chontos

Jim Messina ’93 went from

Todd Goodrich ’88

walking the Oval on the

Jacob Baynham ’07 Brenda Day ’95 Jennifer Sauer ’01 Cary Shimek Patia Stephens ’00, M.F.A. ’07 Ashley Zuelke ’09

UM campus to working just a few doors down from the Oval Office, serving as deputy chief of

Betsy Holmquist ’67, M.A. ’83 Jay Kettering ’82

staff for President Obama.

Meg Oliver Basinger ’93 Laura Brehm Denise Dowling ’82 Jim Foley Daryl Gadbow ’75 Charlie Hood ’61, M.A. ’69 Bill Johnston ’79, M.P.A. ’91 Jed Liston ’82, M.Ed. ’00 Ginny Merriam ’86 Don Oliver ’58 Carol Williams ’65 Kurt Wilson ’83

Eric Elander ’77 406-360-3321 elander@montana.com

ADVERTISING

REPRESENTATIVE

16

EDITORIAL OFFICES

University Relations 325 Brantly Hall The University of Montana Missoula, MT 59812-7642 406-243-2488 Voluntary Subscription:

On the Window Seat, an oil painting on canvas by Fra Dana, is only one of 10,000 pieces in UM’s Montana Museum of Art and Culture permanent collection.

$15

www.umt.edu/montanan E-Mail: themontanan@umontana.edu UM Web site: www.umt.edu Web site:

877-UM-ALUMS or support@UMontanaAlumni.org Please allow eight weeks for mailings to reflect changes.

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Photo by Doug Graham

The Montanan is produced by University Relations. It is published three times a year

by The University of Montana for its alumni and friends.

nts

FEATURES 16

The Fly-Fishing Lure

By Daryl Gadbow ’75 A world-class fly-fishing river outside UM’s back door helps the University attract top-notch students, staff, and faculty members.

16

22

Obama’s Fixer

By Erin Billings ’95 Alum Jim Messina now serves as one of two deputy chiefs of staff for President Barack Obama.

Will Digital Kill The Radio Star?

26

22

By Jacob Baynham ’07 KBGA works overtime to stay relevant in the shifting world of radio with plans for a streaming Web site and digital music library.

DEPARTMENTS 3 5 31

26

33 35 48

Letters Around the Oval Bookshelf UM Foundation About Alumni Artifacts

ON THE COVER: UM student Jamie Rogers, shown enjoying a morning fly-fishing expedition on the Bitterroot River, is one of many who have come to the University for both its academic and aesthetic outdoors appeal.

Cover photo by Erik Stenbakken

www.umt.edu/montanan

Montanan spring 2009 |

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letters It is always a pleasure to return to campus to see how well the music department and its programs have flourished throughout the years.

Thanks again for a great article!

The Alumni Band celebrated its twentieth birthday during the 2008 Homecoming parade.

HIGHER EDUCATION AT A HIGHER COST

I found it interesting to read the article concerning the struggles of paying for a Montana education these days. I think it is very possible to go to school without incurring student loans. You have to adjust your quality of life and comfort level and be dedicated to your “cause”—education without the burden of loans. I noticed Kendra, from the article, was fueling up a fairly new car to commute outside of town where the rent was cheaper. If you add up the monthly cost of driving a newer car (insurance, payments, etc.), it’s a killer. A part-time or nearly full-time job is an important part of the process, too. I found work made me budget my time, so I actually accomplished more during the times I studied.

I lived close to campus in a bedroom of an elderly woman’s basement. There was barely a shower—let alone a bathroom— but it was cheap. I purchased a meal plan at the food service, so I could load up on calories every once in awhile. I worked as a volunteer wrestling coach at a local high school, a waiter at a casino restaurant, and a seasonal worker for UPS, off-loading trucks during Christmas. One weekend a month I drove a beat-up, rusty Chevy Chevette to Billings for my U.S. Marine Reserve training.

What a relief to graduate with no student loans and start my career as a Marine officer debt-free. Now my son is attending UM, and although he’s not living quite the spartan life I did, he is working a part-time job (he heard all the stories) and trying to make ends meet. Good article, thanks. Go Griz.

Lt. Col. Ted Adams ’92 U.S.M.C.

Kunar Province, Afghanistan www.umt.edu/montanan

Steve Armstrong ’73

BAND ON A BUDGET

I enjoyed your article on the UM Alumni Band.

On page twenty-two of the magazine, a sentence states: “Because of a hiatus in the UM Marching Band program during the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Alumni Band has few members from those years.”

I was heavily invested in the music program and music department in the years 1969-1973, although I was a double major in history and political science.

The Marching Band was alive and well at least through the fall of 1970. (I went to the Camelia Bowl in Sacramento with the Marching Band in December 1969.) After Lance Boyd created UM’s Jazz Program, the Marching Band lost its director due to budgetary constraints that precluded the hiring of a new director. We only had two directors who were responsible for the wind ensembles.

UM ceased sponsoring a Homecoming parade in either 1971 or 1972 (one of those two years, although I don’t have my old Missoulian or Kaimin articles to recall). At that point, I, along with some other Marching Band folks, organized a Homecoming parade that was meek in size but strong in spirit.

These were strange times in the early 1970s, with budget cuts and students who were not interested in the Marching Band for many reasons—some students even told me that the Marching Band reminded them of a military force and rejected performing in this organization.

Also, the Marching Band and some music department funding was funneled through student activities. There were heated debates at those student government meetings regarding whether to fund football or the arts.

Nonetheless, both the concert and jazz bands developed into vibrant organizations, touring and performing around the state in spite of the budget constraints.

Via e-mail MONTANA ON MY MIND

Congratulations on a beautiful Montanan!

I wish I could have been there for Homecoming and marched with the band.

(I played drums.) I also wish I could have visited the new J-School (Don Anderson Hall). Maybe in 2010 I can do both!

Verna Green Smith ’40

St. Louis, Missouri TALKING ABOUT MY GENERATION

My husband, Bill Thomas, class of 1951, was the first to look at the Montanan when it arrived. He announced, “Your picture is in it.” I laughed and said, “Sure!” Surprise, there it was on the last page in Artifacts (“Greek Through the Generations,” winter 2009). I am the third Tri Delt from the left, Patricia (Pat) Evans, class of 1952. The other three are Margaret O’Leary, Norma Bell, and Joan Gibson. Both Norma and Joan are deceased. Margaret (O’Leary) Wolpest lives in Anaconda, and I live in Bozeman.

Patricia Evans Thomas ’52

Bozeman The Montanan welcomes letters to the editor.

Please sign and include your graduating year or years of attendance, home address, and phone number or e-mail address.

wanted: YOUR Opinions

Montanan Editor, 325 Brantly Hall, Missoula, MT 59812 or themontanan@umontana.edu.

Send them to:

Because of space limitations, we are not able to include all letters sent to us. Letters may be edited for length or clarity. While universities are places of discussion where good people do not always agree, letters deemed potentially libelous or that malign a person or group will not be published. Opinions expressed in the Montanan do not necessarily reflect those of The University of Montana.

Montanan spring 2009 |

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They may die broke, but they’ll never run out of money with a gift annuity.

You can secure fixed annual payments for life by making a contribution to support The University of Montana.

The Office of Gift Planning at The University of Montana Foundation has several giving vehicles that can provide you lifetime income. One is a charitable gift annuity (CGA). A CGA will pay you (and another individual, if desired) a fixed dollar amount when you make an irrevocable gift to support the University. The rate of payment is determined by your age at the time of your contribution. Please see the chart below.

One Life

Two Lives

Your Age

Annuity Rate

Your Ages

Annuity Rate

50

4.40%

50/55

3.90%

55

4.80%

55/60

4.40%

60

5.00%

60/65

4.80%

65

5.30%

65/70

5.00%

70

5.70%

70/75

5.30%

75

6.30%

75/80

5.80%

80

7.10%

80/85

6.50%

85

8.10%

85/90

7.50%

90+ 9.50%

90/95

9.00%

Example: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, ages 78 & 80, would like leave their legacy in the form of an endowed faculty fellowship to honor their favorite professor, who introduced them to each other while they were students. The Smiths are on a fixed income and need guaranteed annual income. They have chosen to establish a CGA. Amount of Gift Charitable Deduction Tax Savings (35% tax bracket) Montana Endowment Tax Credit* Cost of Gift Lifetime annual income

$250,000 $95,663 $33,482 $20,000 $196,518 $15,000

For more information on using a UM charitable gift annuity for estate planning, contact:

Theresa Timms Boyer Director of Gift Planning GiftPlanningUMF@mso.umt.edu (800) 443-2593

This is not legal advice. Any prospective donor should seek the advice of a qualified estate and/or tax professional to determine the consequences of his/her gift.

Notables | President‘s Corner | by the numbers | Griz Nation

Photo by Todd Goodrich

around the oval A

‘Grateful Nation’ Gaining Ground

nonprofit organization that enlisted soldiers have earned a bachelor’s offers full college scholarships degree or higher. Children whose parents and outreach services to children attended college are more likely to of Montana soldiers killed in Iraq and pursue higher education.

Afghanistan is gaining recognition after “The low college attendance by our receiving national exposure recently on infantry troops, who are the most likely NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. to be killed in the line of duty, and the David Bell, an insurance executive and reality of a single parent left to deal with 1996 UM graduate, and John McCarrick, the financial and socioeconomic issues a New York attorney, founded Grateful of raising a child alone, create a bitter Nation in 2007 as a way to give back to irony,” Bell says. “When an American fallen soldiers and their families. “This innovative soldier pays the ultimate Their pilot program was created price for our country, scholarship and in Montana with the goal of the soldier’s children are outreach program is eventual implementation in all effectively sentenced to a life a first-of-its-kind for fifty states. without the education and On March 31, an NBC news children of Montana tools needed to help them soldiers who have segment featured interviews realize the American dream.” paid the ultimate with widows and children of He says Grateful Nation Montana soldiers recently killed, price. These children is changing this with a as well as a teenage recipient of unique program that fosters will now have access a Grateful Nation scholarship a lifelong connection to the financial who already is enrolled in the between universities and resources and help program. the surviving families of with the academic The new program, which America’s fallen heroes. requirements and can be used to attend any school When a Montana soldier mindset to attend in the Montana University is killed, the Montana college in Montana.”

System, is administered at UM University System facilitates –Gov. Schweitzer

by Teresa Branch, vice president a connection between for Student Affairs. Program funds are the surviving parent and one of the state managed by the UM Foundation. universities.

UM President George Dennison says, Children under age twelve and their “Grateful Nation offers an important parents are brought to campuses several service for the children of Americans who times a year for events to help them become have made the greatest sacrifice for their part of the academic and social community. country. We view it as a privilege for the The university system contacts teachers of University to participate in this effort. I can elementary schoolchildren with news of the think of nothing more appropriate than a scholarships, then monitors the students’ guarantee of education for the children of academic and social progress. fallen heroes.”

Bell says when children reach middle Bell says Montana has lost more soldiers school, they are assigned an academic per capita than any other state. Only student tutor and a faculty mentor from about 10 percent of U.S. soldiers currently their chosen university. These members of deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have a the university community tutor and counsel bachelor’s degree, and only 4 percent of all enrolled students through high school, www.umt.edu/montanan

Dylan Hyland, a junior at Missoula's Loyola High School, will attend UM on a Grateful Nation scholarship in 2010. He plans to study criminology.

preparing them both academically and emotionally to meet the challenges of a successful college experience.

Cindy McCain, wife of Arizona Sen. John McCain, joined the Grateful Nation board of directors last year after learning of the nonprofit, which is neither political nor partisan. The organization has received enthusiastic bipartisan support from political leaders, including Montana Sens.

Max Baucus and Jon Tester, Rep. Denny Rehberg, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

“We greatly appreciate the opportunities being created by Grateful Nation Montana,” Schweitzer says. “This innovative scholarship and outreach program is a first-of-its-kind for children of Montana soldiers who have paid the ultimate price. These children will now have access to the financial resources and help with the academic requirements and mindset to attend college in Montana.”

Grateful Nation now is conducting a fundraising campaign to underwrite current and future scholarships. A full description of Grateful Nation Montana’s mission and activities can be found on the organization’s Web site at www. gratefulnationmontana.com.

Montanan spring 2009 |

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tudents from UM’s School of Journalism and School of Law had an unusual classroom this semester—the courtroom of the most extensive environmental criminal trial in U.S. history, taking place right here in Missoula.

The trial began in February for W.R. Grace & Co. and five former executives and employees charged with knowingly endangering lives by hiding the health risks of the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore the company mined in Libby from 1963 to 1990.

In a class called the Grace Case Project, thirteen journalism students and seventeen law students joined forces to document this historic trial by way of a blog and a social networking Web site called Twitter—a sort of Internet-age telegraph system.

The students use Twitter to disseminate brief updates of up to 140 characters—called “tweets”—via laptops from the courtroom.

Depending on the intensity of the trial, the students’ tweets can come as frequently as five per minute, but average about one every ten minutes. As a result, the proceedings are immediately accessible to the public—something never seen before in legal journalism. “It allows you to feel the trial in a different way,” says Andrew King-Ries, assistant professor of law and co-teacher of the class. “It’s a much more intimate experience.”

On the blog, the journalism students provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of case developments alongside the law students’ explanations of the legal twists and turns. Background stories on

issues surrounding the case and profiles of key players also are on the blog.

Assistant Professor Nadia White teaches the journalism portion of the class. White is excited about the virtual seat in the courtroom this project offers communities affected by vermiculite ore from Libby. In their twenty-seven-year management of the mine, W.R. Grace shipped contaminated vermiculite to 236 locations in thirty-nine states, from Hawaii to Massachusetts.

“We hope to offer access to the trial to the far-flung communities that handled W.R. Grace ore,” White says. “Asbestoscontaminated ore was shipped throughout the country from Montana. We’d like to give people in those communities a chance to peer back into this state to decide for themselves whether justice is being served.”

The project already has garnered a lot of attention. At press time the blog has received more than 74,000 page views, with an average browsing time of almost six minutes. The Web sites of the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, The Spokesman Review and other news organizations have linked to the blog, and two Libby papers are using the articles to keep their readers in touch with the trial. An online reporter for McClatchy newspapers calls the students’ innovative reporting “the future of legal coverage.”

To view UM student coverage of the W.R. Grace trial, visit http://blog.umt.edu/gracecase and http://twitter.com/ UMGraceCase.

Library Lands Historic Collection When Theodore Roosevelt and his friends observed declining wildlife populations back in 1887, they responded by founding the Boone and Crockett Club, which has since become the oldest national wildlife conservation organization in North America.

Besides being involved with multitudes of conservation efforts and maintaining the hunting records of North American big game, the club has amassed a huge volume of historic files, letters, and photographs during its 122-year run—enough to fill about 150 boxes. And now this massive collection has been donated to UM’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.

UM Archivist Donna McCrea says the University library has sought the prestigious collection since the Boone and Crockett Club moved its headquarters from Virginia to Missoula in 1993.

6 | spring 2009 Montanan

“We are thrilled this material is coming to The University of Montana,” McCrea says. “This is a collection of national significance, and we’re proud the club chose to place their records at UM.” McCrea says no one knows what hidden treasures the collection might contain.

“Part of the reason they turned things over to us is to really find out what they have,” she says. “It’s a big collection, and it may take us a year to really go through it and get it fully organized and cataloged.”

Boone and Crockett historian Leonard Wurman says the club researched a number of nationally acknowledged archival institutions and was delighted to find the one it needed right in its own backyard in Missoula. “It is important to the club that these materials be easily available to those researching America’s conservation history,” Wurman says.

A postcard of a carving in a tree found in Sullivan County, Tenn. The carving reads, “D. Boon Killed a Bar [sic] on this tree 1775.”

The postcard belonged to Theodore Roosevelt and was given to the Boone and Crockett Club by his son, Archibald B. Roosevelt.

Bonnie Allen, UM’s dean of libraries, says the collaboration between the library and the Boone and Crockett Club is a natural fit.

McCrea and her staff packed and moved the material March 11-13 from the club headquarters at Missoula’s Old Milwaukee Railroad Depot building to the library’s Archives and Special Collections.

Materials were placed in special acid-free boxes.

Boone & Crockett Club Records, Archives & Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula

Trial By Twitter

Photo by Todd Goodrich

around the oval

The President’s Corner Notable and Quotable

Photos by Erik Stenbakken

Craig Barrett, chairman of the board for

technology giant Intel Corp., will speak at UM’s 112th Commencement ceremonies Saturday, May 16, at the Adams Center. He will speak at the 9:30 a.m. ceremony for the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Technology and again during the 2 p.m. ceremony for the professional schools of business administration, fine arts, journalism, and education, the Colleges of Forestry and Conservation, and the College of Health Professions and Biomedical Sciences.

UM will present two honorary doctorate degrees during the Commencement ceremonies as well. Caleb Shields, a resident of the Fort Peck Reservation, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during the morning ceremony, and Phyllis Washington of Missoula will receive an honorary Doctor of Education degree during the afternoon ceremony.

New figures rank UM No. 10 in the nation for producing Peace Corps volunteers. The 2009 list ranks medium-sized colleges and universities with enrollments between 5,001 and 15,000. UM now has thirty alumni serving in the Peace Corps.

Last year, the University was ranked seventeenth nationally, with twenty-three volunteers serving abroad. This year’s improved ranking places UM ahead of universities such as Brown, Notre Dame, and Yale. George Washington University topped the list with fifty-seven volunteers.

In March UM announced the creation of one of the nation’s first undergraduate degree programs devoted to the challenges and opportunities presented by global climate change. The new minor will combine rigorous training in sciences with course work in ethics and policy to offer students a unique, multidisciplinary understanding of climate change. Students will examine the scientific and social dimensions of global climate change, as well as explore potential solutions. “The climate change topic is rapidly evolving from only an earth science issue to a technological, economic, and sociological issue for humanity,” says UM Regents Professor of Ecology Steve Running, who directs the new program. “We have designed this broad interdisciplinary curriculum to reflect this expansion of focus.” Students pursuing the minor will take an interdisciplinary introductory course and six credits in each of three areas of study: climate change science, climate change and society, and climate change solutions. www.umt.edu/montanan

N

early two decades ago, while contemplating the news that someone had nominated me for the Presidency of The University of Montana, I pulled from the Library shelf my dog-eared copy of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and tried to read just a few lines to get the feel of Montana again. Jane and I had moved to Michigan three years earlier, an area of the country we increasingly considered “Back East.” However, as happens with most people, I found myself some hours later finishing the novella yet one more time. Maclean, Montana, rivers, and fly fishing stir images and emotions deeply embedded in identity and personality.

Adding Griz football and community engagement creates a context for the new issue of the Montanan.

As with all earlier issues, this one focuses on the people who shape Missoula and The University of Montana. Students, faculty, staff, community folks, and new migrants come to Missoula because of the magical allure of free-flowing rivers, magnificent scenery, world-class fly fishing, and top-notch academic programs, and many find it nearly impossible to leave. Those who do leave rarely forget Missoula and the University, but instead return as often as they can. Since the middle of the decade of the 1980s, Griz football has added to the mix. Finally, the thriving sense of engagement in Missoula and on the campus binds people even more closely within a truly amazing city close-knit with a wonderful University.

As you read through this issue, think again of the people you have met because of your decision to attend the University, join the community of scholars and engaged staff, or live in this welcoming community. They come from all points of the compass and all parts of the world, and add to the diversity that infuses this community. We usually take for granted the great treasures of life, as Jane and I discovered when we moved to Michigan. We enjoyed life in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and at Western Michigan University, although we never felt quite the same sense of engagement and community that we experience in Missoula and on The University of Montana campus. Even after nearly two decades, the feeling of having come home remains fresh and tangible. In Norman Maclean’s unforgettable description of the lesson he and his brother learned while growing up in Missoula: The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.

Nonetheless, having earned acceptance into the Missoula and UM family, the weary world traveler meets in the most unexpected places the familiar and heartfelt “Go Griz” greeting of welcome.

George M. Dennison, ’62, ’63 President and Professor of History

Montanan spring 2009 |

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around the oval

3,148: 633: 49: 2: 112: 7:

129: 120: 30:

$19: 205:

–Ashley Zuelke

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F

rom the snowy foothills of the Rocky Mountains in the tiny reservation town of Browning to the sparkling skyline of Chicago, and its affluent suburbs, UM went recruiting for students this winter.

These weren’t your President Dennison reads The average recruiting Great Monte Mystery to a group of trips of sending one Browning first-graders in January. recruiter to a college fair. These were led by President George Dennison, and UM was the only guest at schools visited. Others on the UM team included Executive Vice President Jim Foley, Vice President for Student Affairs Teresa Branch, chief recruiters Jed Liston and Juana Alcala, and faculty favorites such as Garon Smith, chemistry professor and 2008 Montana Professor of the Year, and Dan Pletscher, professor and director of the Wildlife Biology Program.

The UM contingent spread some Griz cheer with high school guidance counselors, principals, teachers, and prospective students and their families during a series of breakfasts, lunches, and receptions hosted by the University in each community.

It’s not typical for presidents to go on the road recruiting, but Dennison has fallen into a routine he enjoys of visiting high schools and talking to students about his days in college and the reasons they need to protect their higher education options. One guidance counselor in suburban Chicago remarked that it was only the second or third time she’d seen a university president out recruiting in the more than twenty years she’d been on the job.

It’s even more unusual for a university president to visit a first-grade class and read to students, as Dennison did in January. Believing it’s never too early to start recruiting, Dennison brought a Monte book with him to read to children in Browning.

Over the past three years, Dennison and his recruiting squad have visited high schools in each of the following cities at least once: Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Whitefish, Bigfork, Great Falls, Livingston, Billings, Butte, Anaconda, Miles City, Glendive, Helena, Lewistown, Browning, Spokane, and Chicago.

Photo by Susan Cuff

— Number of degrees to be - awarded at 2009 UM Commencement.

Number of graduates in 1949.

Number of graduates in 1919.

Number of people in first graduating class, comprising - Eloise Knowles and Ella Robb Glenny, - in 1898. Both diplomas, presented by - first UM President Oscar J. Craig, are - now stored on campus.

Number of Commencement ceremonies in UM’s history.

Number of locations UM has held - Commencement within the last century.

Number of honorary - doctorates distributed in UM history.

Minimum number of semester credits required to graduate - from UM. Number of graduation ceremonies held the weekend - of Commencement.

Current cost of a graduation -gown.

Number of students graduating this year from - UM’s largest professional school, the - School of Business Administration.

—

Recruiting Goes On The Road

Meet Grizwald,

UM’s cartoon bear. In frequent issues of the Montanan, we provide a cartoon featuring Grizwald in need of a caption.

Then it’s up to you, our readers, to send in your most original and creative ideas.

The winning contestant will receive a Griz stadium blanket. Send submissions to: themontanan@umontana.edu.

Artwork by Neal Wiegert

{ By

the

nu m be rs }

Commencement

Photos by Nathan Rott

Into East Africa S

omewhere between watching a zebra give birth on the flat sun-beaten floor of the world’s largest unbroken caldera, Ngorongoro Crater, and wading into the warm coastal waters of the Indian Ocean to taste the locally grown seaweed, it hit UM junior Ann Tezak that this was why she decided to study anthropology at UM. “I had dreamt of going to Africa ever since I was little,” Tezak says. “I remember thinking that I couldn’t believe it (when she heard her class was going on the trip). It was a dream come true.”

Tezak was one of nine UM students who traveled to Tanzania and Zanzibar on a trip led by Above, left: UM junior Sarah anthropology Lecturer Garry Rott helps students with a long Kerr and Professor Kelly Dixon division problem at Arusha’s Bashay Primary School. during the University’s 2009 Bashay’s students spend eight Wintersession. hour days studying math, The two-and-a-half-week trip science, social studies, Swahili, was designed to give the group of and English in their large anthropology students a firsthand concrete schoolhouse. look at the culture, the people, and the environment of historical and contemporary East Africa.

A firsthand look was exactly what they got.

For four nights, the group camped in the heart of Serengeti National Park surrounded by the hundreds of thousands of wildebeests and zebras trekking south in their annual Great Migration. During daily excursions, the group saw tree-climbing

An elephant herd’s matriarch, the lead elephant, eyes UM students in the back of a Land Rover as she cautiously leads her herd across a road in Tarangire National Park. Herds like this can comprise up to 300 individual elephants within Tarangire’s protected borders.

Above, right:

lions, lounging leopards, dustthrowing elephants, and roiling pools of hippos, just to name a few species. One morning, the group rose well before dawn, climbed into an oversized basket, and watched the dawning Serengeti sun illuminate the landscape from the perch of a hot air balloon.

While visiting a Masai village just south of Tarangire National Park, the women from the UM group dressed in traditional clothing, took part in a cultural song and dance, and then helped the native women cake the outside of a hut with a warm mixture of cow-dung and mud.

“It seemed like everything happened right for us,” Kerr says.

“There were a million new experiences, a million new animals, and the students learned a million new things. It went better than I could have ever forecasted or expected.”

Since their return, the group have presented their experience during UM’s International Week and held a brown bag luncheon for International Programs. Because of the success of the trip, which was funded in part by UM’s president’s and provost’s offices and International Programs, Kerr and Dixon have begun making plans for a return trip next winter. They plan to visit places such as Gombe National Park and Kenya that they missed on the first trip. –Nathan Rott For an exclusive slideshow, visit www.umt.edu/montanan.

Where’s Your GRIZ Been? sports a UM hat while counting Adelie Penguins on Bongrain Point, Porquoi Pas Island, in Antarctica this past winter. Carlson spends a few weeks each year working with Oceanites, a nonprofit science and educational foundation that fosters the conservation of the world’s oceans, islands, and their wildlife. “This year I was able to keep track of the Griz in the playoffs from south of the Antarctic Circle. Go Griz!” he writes.

Congratulations, John. You’ve won a $50 gift card to The Bookstore at UM. Do you have a photo of yourself wearing your Griz gear in an amazing place? If so, send it along with a brief description to: themontanan@umontana.edu. Winners will receive a $50 gift card to The Bookstore at UM and see their winning photo published in the Montanan. To be considered, photos must be in focus with the UM or Griz logo clearly visible.

John Carlson ’88

www.umt.edu/montanan

Montanan spring 2009 |

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as loans from more than twenty archaeological organizations, telling the story of how early colonists in the Chesapeake region lived and died 400 years ago.

“It was a great honor to attend the opening ceremony of the exhibit and see my research featured,” McKeown says. “The exhibit is a wonderful opportunity to learn about the real work UM anthropologist and science of forensic anthropology, which is Ashley McKeown’s research is now nothing like what we see on TV.” part of an exhibit Founded in 1607, Jamestown was the first at the Smithsonian permanent English colony in the New World. During Institution’s National a three-year postdoctoral fellowship before joining Museum of Natural the UM faculty, McKeown worked with a team that History. excavated and analyzed more than seventy-five burials at Jamestown. Her work revealed the bone biographies of some of the earliest colonists.

McKeown, a UM anthropology assistant professor, helped excavate and analyze the remains of important individuals such as Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the leaders of the Jamestown expedition and the explorer who named Martha’s Vineyard after his daughter. Gosnold died in forensic anthropologist Ashley McKeown has spent Jamestown in 1607. In 2003 his grave was found just outside the much of her career uncovering the mysteries hidden original James Fort palisade. in old bones. She was part of a team that found evidence of the McKeown also studied the skeleton of a young woman found first surgery performed in the English colonies—a trepanation, buried under a theater in Williamsburg, Va., and, based on tooth in which the skull is drilled to relieve pressure on the brain—and modification, was able to determine that she was an enslaved now some of her related work is part of an exhibit at one of African from the central West African coast.

America’s premier museums, the Smithsonian Institution’s National The interpretation of the lives of seventeenth century colonists, Museum of Natural History. both the famous and the mundane, are presented in the wide“Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the Seventeenth-Century ranging exhibition that seeks to inform visitors about life and Chesapeake” is on display at the Washington, D.C., museum death in the early Chesapeake, an area that gave rise to many of through February 6, 2011. It incorporates about 340 objects, the nation’s most famous leaders. View more information online at artifacts, and human bones from the museum’s collection, as well http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone.

Written In Bone

UM

10 | spring 2009 Montanan

Photo by Todd Goodrich

around the oval

Photo by Todd Goodrich

Historic Agreement Preserves Former Detention Camp With the United States’ Entry Into World War II, sleepy Fort Missoula became home to about 1,000 Italian nationals, a similar number of Japanese and Peruvian-Japanese aliens, and a few Germans. They were housed in the fort’s Alien Detention Historical Museum at Fort Missoula Camp from 1941 to 1944.

Director Robert Brown discusses the The inmates were all men, and none were American preservation site with media. citizens. The forced detention of these people in Western Montana created a strange and fascinating chapter in Missoula history. And now that history will be protected by a new agreement among UM, Missoula County, and the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula.

The parties in the agreement all own property once used for the camp, and they have signed a memorandum of understanding to preserve, interpret, and maintain the former camp barracks area. In addition, they will cooperate to obtain National Landmark Status for Fort Missoula. Then in 2011 they will jointly sponsor a conference about the alien st Montana Tell us your be you internment period to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the United States’ entry because as connection, ywhere er ev , w no by into World War II. surely know Send e. on can make “We feel a responsibility to preserve this historic area and what occurred there for you go you ur yo ith w g alon the benefit of future generations,” UM President George Dennison says. “Scholars still submissions, ass uation, or cl ad gr of te da work to unravel the full story of the camp. Certainly some of the detainments must have , to: te ria approp years where .edu. seemed unavoidable, while others remain very much in doubt, suggesting lessons for na ta on um emontanan@ th mpiled co leaders, now and in the future.” ies will be Winning stor n na ta on M UM and the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula will create learning opportunities ming into an upco me co be es tri for students and the public, including classroom education, fieldwork, distance learning, feature. All en tions, niversity Rela and internships. The University and the museum already have a long history of working property of U edit to ht rig e in th together. Robert Brown, the museum’s executive director, is an affiliate faculty member and we reta l. the materia and publish in UM’s Department of History, and the museum offers internships for UM history students.

The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula now occupies what was the Alien Detention Camp headquarters. UM owns a few buildings left from the camp era that now are used for storage or University research.

Wanted:ies Your Stor

www.umt.edu/montanan

Montanan spring 2009 |

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An aerial shot of the Oval as seen in one of the winning commercials.

Awards Competition, while Vision, a research magazine published once a year, received a Merit award. All three publications were produced by the University Relations staff.

UM’s writing also captured the attention of CASE District VIII judges, who awarded Silvers to Enrollment Services for copy in its viewbook and recruiting brochure and to freelance writer Deborah Richie Oberbillig for a story on wildlife biology Professor Scott Mills’ research on snowshoe hares that appeared in the 2008 Vision. University Relations Senior News Editor Cary Shimek won a Bronze award for a story on biology Professor Ken Dial and his major new theory of bird evolution that appeared in the 2008 Vision. Montanan Editor-in-Chief Brianne Burrowes received the CASE Rising Star Award in communications. The award recognizes a young professional with three to five years experience in the education advancement professions whose early success bodes well for future leadership and achievement.

In addition, Enrollment Services won a CASE Bronze award for its Undergraduate Admissions Web site. The department also won a Bronze award from the Admissions Marketing Competition for its Total Recruitment Package.

CASE District VIII comprises the U.S. states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, as well as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

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12 | spring 2009 Montanan

Photo by Chisel Industries

ew video advertisements promoting UM sports and campus lifestyle have taken top honors in recent national and regional competitions, continuing an award-winning streak for the University’s commercial series started several years ago.

A video that helps rev up more than 25,000 Griz fans before their football team hits the field in Washington-Grizzly Stadium struck gold twice in separate 2008 awards competitions. Known to many as the “football tunnel run” and to others as “Griz Nation,” the three-minute video shows the Montana Grizzlies prepping for games. It is shown on the scoreboard’s jumbo screen before kickoff.

The football video won a Gold award at the regional Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s District VIII competition and a Gold award from the national Admissions Marketing Awards Competition. Two additional ads, one promoting Lady Griz basketball and the other illustrating life in Missoula and at UM, won Bronze awards in the CASE District VIII competition.

The Montana-based Chisel Industries produced the commercials. These most recent honors add to a long string of state, regional, and national awards for the commercial series over the last three years.

UM Executive Vice President Jim Foley, who heads the commercial-making effort on campus, says it’s a collaborative venture. “Working together with administrators, faculty, staff, and students makes it clear that the future of UM continues to hold great opportunities.

“We have wonderful people on this campus with real talent and true concern for this community and state who continue to be leaders in higher education.”

In addition, several of the University’s recruiting materials and institutional publications won awards in both competitions.

The 2007 President’s Report and the Research View newsletter each won Silver awards from the national Admissions Marketing

An album produced from Bill Harley’s 2007 UM performances won a Grammy in February.

A Story of Success UM: The Story Begins

Audiences at UM’s University Theatre were treated to the talents of nationally renowned singer and storyteller Bill Harley in June 2007 during his first live recordings for a television and radio program. Harley is a family entertainer known for delighting children and adults alike with his stories and songs that paint a vibrant and hilarious picture about growing up and family life.

The TV version of the performances—“Yes to Running! Bill Harley Live”—premiered in February 2008 on Montana PBS. The show was a joint production of UM-based Montana PBS station KUFM-TV and Montana Public Radio station KUFMFM. Public television stations across the country were offered the show for airing in fall 2008, and it was broadcast nationwide.

A double CD of the concert also was produced. Daniel Dauterive, KUFM-TV operations director, originated the idea of recording the popular performer and was co-producer of the album with Harley. Michael Marsolek, MTPR program director, coordinated the audio for Harley’s two live concerts at UM and engineered the recording.

Los Angeles: The Rest of the Story

When Grammy Award nominations were announced December 3, 2008, in Los Angeles, the double CD album produced from those 2007 live performances at UM was among those listed in the category for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. The album—“Yes to Running: Bill Harley Live”—took the award at the Los Angeles Grammy presentations on February 8, 2009.

“The success of the CD is an example of a total team effort, from Bill Harley, Montana Public Radio, and Montana Public Television to the theater audiences made up from the Missoula community,” Dauterive says. “I wish I could give a big Grammy statue to the city of Missoula and the state of Montana.”

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Music Under the Stars, on the Lake,

Graphic by Eileen Chontos

Get ready for an all-new Montanan experience that allows you to stay better connected with your alma mater. Join the Montanan (Wherever I Am) Facebook group by searching “Montanan Wherever I Am,” and receive updates about your favorite magazine. You also can submit a Class Note, tell us where you’ve worn your Griz gear, and have instant access to the Montanan staff. We’ll see you in cyberspace!

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13

GrizNation

around the oval Lady Griz 2009 Big Sky Conference Champs Robin Selvig

(left)

holds a

piece of the winning net mention Associated Press after the team's Big Sky All-American this season, Conference tournament making Lady Griz history victory; Senior Guard by becoming the program’s Mandy Morales (right) first four-time honorable was the highest Lady Griz While the men didn’t mention All-American. scorer this season. make it to post-season Morales led Montana to 101 tournament play this year, the Grizzlies wins in her four years and finished with celebrated some success, finishing in a tie 1,959 points and 587 assists, which rank with Portland State for second in the Big second and tied for second respectively on the Lady Griz career lists. Morales also was Sky Conference, going 11-5 in league, and 17-12 overall. Guard Anthony Johnson a four-time unanimous first team All-Big a junior from Tacoma, Wash., was voted Sky Conference selection and the Big Sky the Big Sky’s “Newcomer of the Year.” tournament MVP as a junior and senior.

Johnson is the first Grizzly player to lead Fellow seniors Sonja Rogers and the league in scoring since forward Kevin Brittany Lohman brought a lot to the Kearney averaged 18.3 points per contest team as well. Rogers was always a threat in 1991. Johnson averaged 21.4 points in from three-point range, leading the team conference play. He also was a unanimous with seventy-one treys on the season and selection for first team All-Big Sky honors, averaging 13.6 points a game to be the second-highest scorer on the team. Morales while senior forward Jordan Hasquet was named to the second team. Hasquet, a was the highest, averaging 16.9. As a Missoula native, ended his career ranked center, Lohman provided a solid defensive presence in the key, was the second-highest seventh in school history in scoring (1,396 points) and three-pointers made (152), rebounder on the team, and fourth in and is eighth in career rebounds with 718. scoring, averaging 7.3 points per contest.

Hasquet also finished fourth in the league Younger players like sophomore forward in rebounding in 2008-09, and for the Sarah Ena, who averaged 10.7 points third season in a row, he led Montana in and led the team in rebounding, ensure that category.

Montana will be strong again next season.

A Royal Flush For UM Athlete Scholarships More than 170 Griz fans around the state anted up in February and March to raise $50,000 for UM studentathlete scholarships during the 2009 Grizzly Scholarship Association Poker Shootout.

The tournament began with qualifying rounds in Cut Bank, Hamilton, Kalispell, Missoula, Helena, and Butte.

14 | spring 2009 Montanan

The top three finishers from each event advanced to the championship game.

Several other participants paid a special buy-in to reach the final round, which was held at The Press Box in Missoula on March 15.

Eighty-nine competitors played their hand at the championship table, where Max Martin of Shelby out-

bluffed his opponents to take the top prize. With the win he earned a $10,000 seat at the 2009 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

But the real winners of the second annual event are UM’s student-athletes. The money raised during the poker shootout will fund scholarships for students who wear the Grizzly uniform.

GSA Executive Director Greg Sundberg says the poker shootout once again succeeded

at rallying UM’s statewide community in support of the Griz.

“It’s a great event where our participants have a lot of fun and at the same time raise valuable funds for the GSA,” he says.

The 2010 GSA Poker Shootout is already in the works. Qualifying tournaments are scheduled around the state in January and February, with the championship round slated for March 14 in Missoula.

Photos by Todd Goodrich

Y

ou can be certain that every women’s basketball team in the Big Sky Conference uses UM Coach Robin Selvig and his Lady Griz as the blueprint of a truly successful basketball program. From season to season, Montana consistently finds itself at the top of its conference. The success of the Lady Griz’s 2008-09 campaign and the milestones reached are yet another example of that fact. Coach Selvig surpassed 700 career wins in his thirty-first season as UM’s coach, becoming the fifth fastest coach in NCAA men’s or women’s basketball history to reach 700 victories. He finished the year with 725 wins.

The Lady Griz went 28-5 in 2008-09 to match a program record for singleseason wins. Montana won the Big Sky’s regular-season title with a 15-1 league record, hosted and won the conference tournament, and advanced to the program’s eighteenth NCAA tournament.

Sadly, success in the tourney was not to be as Montana lost its first-round game to Pittsburgh, 64-35, in Seattle. But that one disappointment aside, it was a very good season.

At the helm of this team was a talented senior class led by guard Mandy Morales, who had a stellar career at UM. She was named an honorable

The

Fly-Fishing

Lure

UM junior Jamie Rogers takes some time out of his day to fly-fish on the Bitterroot River.

16 | spring 2009 Montanan

By Daryl Gadbow

e

P

hillips Exeter Academy is recognized as a traditional launching pad for students en route to an Ivy League college education. It’s a good bet that the 50 percent of its graduates who don’t blast off for Harvard are likely to land at Yale.

Coming from a long line of Yale grads, Jamie Rogers’ future trajectory seemed preordained when he finished up at the exclusive prep school in Exeter, N.H. There was no doubt in his mind, says Rogers, regarding his college destination.

Pastime lands students, faculty, staff at UM

Fly-fishing by Erik Stenbakken; fly still by Todd Goodrich

“From an early age,” he says, “my dad instilled in me a love of rivers and fish and good books. So, when it came time to consider college, those passions were factors. The University of Montana popped up on my radar pretty quickly, and it wasn’t long before it was my first and only choice.”

www.umt.edu/montanan

So, as much as UM’s reputation for academic excellence, it was the close proximity of the Bitterroot, Blackfoot, and Clark Fork rivers, and Rock Creek— internationally renowned fly-fishing waters— that drew Rogers from his home in New York City to the Missoula campus.

He’s certainly not alone. He joins a lengthy procession of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, who have followed their passion for fly-fishing to UM. Many of those students, after completing their education, have chosen careers in the sport.

Rogers, now a junior majoring in English at the University, with emphases in creative writing and literature, has become an official spokesman for attracting prospective students to UM through fly-fishing.

Montanan spring 2009 |

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“My hobby is fishing,” he says. “And being at The University of Montana is convenient because now I’m standing about five miles away from campus on a Blue Ribbon trout stream.”

In the video, Rogers traces graceful arcs with his fly rod, casting from a raft as he drifts solo along a tranquil stretch of the Bitterroot. His stylish efforts are rewarded with a gorgeous rainbow gleaming in his net.

His narration continues: “Balance for me is being able to go study literature with my favorite poet in the morning, and then I can, between classes in the afternoon, go fish on one of the most famous trout streams in America. And then go to class again. That’s balance for me.

“Fishing keeps me in Missoula for sure,” he adds. “You know, I like to get around the state, because there are a lot of beautiful places. But there are so many trout within 20 miles of Missoula, there’s no reason to ever leave.”

Videos on UM’s Web site such as this one can be particularly effective in recruiting new students, Liston says.

Surveys of all incoming students—as well as students who are accepted into UM but don’t enroll—indicate that 93 percent of all students do the majority of their research about college choices on the Web, Liston says. And 85 percent of students apply to colleges online.

“With this age group you have to tell a compelling story,” he adds. “They’re the most savvy consumers who ever walked the planet. But if you get students who are a good fit, they’ll stay, like Jamie. He’s a great fit.”

The incoming students are asked in the survey why they decided to come to UM. Opportunities to engage in outdoor recreational activities often are listed as a primary reason, according to Liston.

“Outdoor recreation is a cornerstone for us,” he says.

“Especially for kids from out of state. We use it in recruiting. We tell them it’s the culture of Missoula and the University. It’s what we do. The kind of kids we attract love this outdoor concept.”

18 | spring 2009 Montanan

Fly-fishing shows up frequently as a primary influence in students’ decisions to enroll at UM, Liston adds. And that’s been especially prevalent since the hit movie A River Runs Through It came out in 1992.

Based on the novella by the late Missoula native Norman Maclean, the movie is set in Missoula and Western Montana, and fly-fishing figures prominently as a major backdrop to the story.

“The movie, when it came out, was such a sensation,” Liston says. “It caused an upsurge in interest in fly-fishing.”

Although the Missoula area, more than UM, was closely identified with the movie, he adds, “We certainly benefited from that. Generally, we attracted good fly-fishing students who were already committed to it. The movie enhanced our community and the University. We haven’t seen a push like that in years.”

However, as popularity of the film waned, says Liston, the interest in fly-fishing it sparked led to more people reading Maclean’s novel and other classic fly-fishing literature.

“That’s important for prospective students,” he says. “As dean of admissions, you want them to be readers. Many had read the great (angling) writers. What we’ve seen is students very well-read, not only in the how-to, but the philosophy of fly-fishing.”

Occasionally, says Liston, some prospective students admit to feeling intimidated by the idea that everyone in Montana and at UM are all expert anglers.

“I tell them that everyone is willing to share it with others–all the students and faculty,” he says. “It’s not a closed group. I think that’s what’s unique about the University. What I convey to the prospective students is that we can line you up with someone to teach you.”

Avid Anglers

In fact, UM provides students opportunities to learn how to fly-fish through classes offered by both the Campus Recreation Outdoor Program and the Department of Health and Human Performance.

In recent years, the Outdoor Program’s fly-fishing courses have been taught by George Kesel, owner of Kesel’s Four Rivers Fly Shop in Missoula. continued on page 20

Photos by Erik Stenbakken

He stars in a promotional video featured on UM’s Undergraduate Admissions Web page.

Along with other videos on the site highlighting the diverse aspects of student life at the University, Rogers’ fly-fishing video is designed as a recruiting tool, says Jed Liston, assistant vice president for enrollment.

With the idyllic setting of the sparkling Bitterroot River in the background, Rogers speaks casually and articulately in the video about the value of fly-fishing as an integral part of his experience at UM.

Rogers catches his first fish of the day on the Bitterroot River.

Below: Rogers, who also works at Grizzly Hackle, says it did not take much for UM to become his first, and only, choice for attending college.

Staffers Fulfill Fly-Fishing Fantasies

Photo of fly and foam cutting equipment by Kathleen Tomsu; Photo of fly-casting research courtesy of Jason Borger

T

“There’s nobody else out there doing what we do,” says McCue. (On the Web, see www. flycastinginstitute. com.)

McCue, who originally came to UM from Billings as an undergraduate student in 1991, says he was attracted by the outstanding fly-fishing available in the vicinity.

“I’d get done with class at 11:30 in the morning, and have a chemistry lab from 3 to 5 in the afternoon,” he says. “In between, I’d run down to the student cafeteria, grab a sandwich, and then run down to the Clark Fork to fish.”

After completing medical school, says McCue, “there was no happier guy in the world to see they were advertising for a team physician at The University of Montana. It was a chance for me to come back to a community that I love and be able to enjoy some great fly-fishing.”

Tony Tomsu is UM’s associate director for Institutional Research and Planning.

He moved to the Bitterroot Valley just south of Missoula from Texas in 1993, motivated by a desire to be closer to topnotch fly-fishing.

“I’d been a fly-tier all my life,” he says. “And although there are no trout in Texas, I’d started trout fishing seriously in Colorado. I spent six or seven years trying to decide where I wanted to live. I did a lot of research and decided Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley were ideal. It has the right combination of urban and country and the University.

Plus, it’s trout central.”

Eleven years ago, as an offshoot of his interest in tying flies made of foam for his An ultra-high-speed camera personal use, Tomsu started a image of casting techniques company to manufacture tools (shown here) is used by McCue to produce foam flies. to analyze potential injuries.

wo UM staff members not only came to UM because of fly-fishing, but also have since become widely known for their endeavors in the fly-fishing world.

Dr. Tim McCue, the head team physician for UM’s Intercollegiate Athletics programs, also is considered perhaps the world’s leading authority on fly-casting injuries.

After conducting an extensive survey of certified fly-casting instructors across the United States, McCue started the nation’s first Fly Casting Institute in 2004, a multiday clinic designed to analyze a fly-fisher’s casting technique and prescribe specific methods to prevent future injury and alleviate existing pain associated with casting a fly rod.

And, according to McCue, there’s a surprising amount of pain to go around in fly-fishing—an activity generally described as contemplative, relaxing, gentle, and graceful, as much an art form as a sport.

In his survey of casting instructors, he found that of the 292 who responded, virtually all reported experiencing some form of pain or discomfort in their shoulders, elbows, and wrists.

From the results, McCue estimates that up to 73 percent of America’s 13 million flyfishers may be enduring painful side effects of their pursuit.

Using ultra-high-speed cameras to record casting technique in his institute clinics each summer, McCue and his partners can analyze fly-casters’ technique and help them learn to alter their casting style to avoid injury. In their clinics they also prescribe physical therapy for existing injuries.

www.umt.edu/montanan

Tony Tomsu holds his new hopper pattern.

Left: The stonefly body cutters developed by Tomsu’s company, River Road Creations.

Above:

Making the tools by himself in his garage at first, Tomsu built a new facility in 2003 and hired three employees to help in the manufacturing process. The company’s sales growth nearly doubled every year.

Today, his company, River Road Creations in Stevensville, is the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of foam cutters to form fly wings and bodies.

Initially, foam flies offended the sensibility of some fly-fishers who favored the traditional patterns made of natural fur and feathers, Tomsu says. But because of their exceptional effectiveness, durability, ease of tying, and especially their inherent unsinkable quality—not to mention their popularity with professional fly-fishing guides around the country—foam flies have now gained widespread acceptance.

Tomsu’s company makes foam cutters to produce realistic flies in myriad sizes and patterns, from giant saltwater and bass creations to tiny mayflies for discriminating trout.

In addition to making the foam cutters, Tomsu’s company also distributes a variety of foam fly-tying materials around the world. His Web site (www. riverroadcreations.com) not only markets his products, but also contains detailed instructions for tying many innovative fly patterns.

Montanan spring 2009 |

19

“Most of the students—I’d say 80 percent—are from out of state,” says Kesel. “They’ve come here, and they’re trying to learn to fly-fish, which is part of why they’ve come to Montana from where they were. They want to do the things Montana offers—outdoor activities in general. And intrinsic to that is flyfishing.”

Fly-fishing classes offered through the Department of Health and Human Performance in recent years have been provided by Missoula’s Kingfisher Fly Shop, conveniently located just across the Clark Fork River from the UM campus.

Kingfisher owners Matt Potter and Jim Cox—both UM alumni—as well as several of their fly-fishing guides, have taught the classes at UM. Three classes are offered each year–spring, summer, and fall. Two are coed, and one is exclusively for women.

Enrollment is limited to about thirty students in each. Demand is high, according to Cox and Potter.

“They’re hugely popular classes,” Cox says. “They fill up in about an hour, as soon as they hit CyberBear (UM’s online class registration service).”

“Typically,” adds Potter, “90 percent of the students are seniors because they get preference. I expected most to be from out of state. But it’s an even mix. Half the kids at the University are here for the fishing or outdoors activities. They’re a huge part of our customer base.”

And since the shop opened a dozen years ago, UM students and alumni have been a mainstay of the Kingfisher’s guide staff and shop employees, Cox says.

After researching colleges around the country Potter came from Connecticut to UM specifically for its fly-fishing opportunities.

20 | spring 2009 Montanan

Hooked On Fly-Fishing

Ask around any academic department at UM, and you’re likely to find at least one or two faculty members who were pulled in by the lure of fly-fishing. And many top educators who could leave UM to join other prestigious universities will tell you they choose to stay, in part, because of the Missoula lifestyle— including fly-fishing.

Diana Six is a professor of forest entomology and pathology and interim associate dean of graduate programs in the Department of Ecosystem Sciences of UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation.

She didn’t originally come to UM to fly-fish.

“But it certainly is one of the things keeping me here,” Six says.

A couple of years after arriving at UM, during which she was consumed with setting up a research program, “my husband bought me a little $25 fly-tying kit for Christmas,” she says. “I tied up all five flies it was equipped to make and was hooked. I promptly went out and maxed out several credit cards on tools and feathers and fur. And I tied, and tied, and tied.

“I also should have had a bumper sticker on my car that stated, ‘I brake for road-kill.’

“After a few months of obsessive tying, I started tying realistic flies, some of which took more than 30 hours to complete.”

Soon her home was overflowing with flies, she adds. So she decided to go fishing to lose some and make room for more.

“I’ve been fly-fishing ever since,” Six says, “both here in Montana, and now for tigerfish in Africa, where I work (on research projects) part of each summer. It’s not only fun, but one of the best ways to beat the stress of a demanding job.”

As spring arrives, Jamie Rogers eagerly anticipates the skwala stonefly hatch that sets off an annual fly-fishing frenzy on the Bitterroot River. So, of course, he’s arranged his school schedule at UM to allow him to fish and attend class in the same day.

“Bottom line is not many universities in the world make that so easy to do,” he says. “And just like every other year I’ve been here, I’m sure my grades will experience a three-week lull. It’s a small price to pay.”

Daryl Gadbow ’75 is a retired reporter and editor after working for twenty-eight years at the Missoulian. He is now a freelance writer enjoying fly-fishing and hunting.

Photos by Erik Stenbakken; fly still by Todd Goodrich

An expert fly-fisher, fly-tier, and angling instructor, Kesel teaches two classes a year at UM—one during spring semester and one in the fall. For the past two years, the classes have had more than twenty-five students each—the maximum size allowed.

Kesel’s course includes four, two-hour classroom sessions, and winds up with two class days on the stream. Each classroom session is divided between an hour of discussion— covering topics such as “reading the water” to deduce where trout live, aquatic insects and their imitation fly patterns, fishing tactics, and trout behavior—followed by an hour of casting instruction outside.

“I talked to the registrar, and he says, ‘A river flows right through town and I’m going fishing as soon as I get off the phone,’” Potter recalls. “After talking to a lot of people, I found out UM has the closest fishing to campus of any university in the U.S.” Cox, a Missoula native, decided to stay home to attend UM because of his obsession with fly-fishing.

“I fished all the time,” Cox says. “I scheduled all my classes so I’d be done by 11 a.m. every day. I’d take any class to fit that, whether it was Latin or social statistics, so I could be on the river by 11. I ended up with an English degree because that’s what I happened to accumulate the most credits in. It kept me fishing all the time.”

“Balance for me is being able to go study literature with my favorite poet in the morning, and then I can, between classes in the afternoon, go fish on one of the most famous trout streams in America.

And then go to class again. That’s balance for me.”

– Jamie Rogers

Rogers paddles down the Bitterroot River after a long day of fly-fishing.

www.umt.edu/montanan

Montanan spring 2009 |

21

Obam ixer F

alumni profile

I

By Erin P. Billings Photos by Doug Graham

n 1980 when he was just eleven years old, Jim Messina realized what he wanted to be when he grew up.

A student at Roosevelt Elementary in Boise, Idaho, and clearly ineligible to vote, Messina volunteered to serve as his school’s campaign manager for President Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid. Carter would go on to lose the race to Ronald Reagan, but Messina ended up with the spoils—having decided on a career in politics.

Obama’s job offer would come on a Friday in June Fast forward through fifteen campaigns, ten states, and nearly three decades. Messina now sits in a sparsely 2008, the day both Messina and Baucus were heading off to Montana to attend the wedding of Baucus’ son, decorated, 12-by-10-foot, windowless office just a Zeno. stone’s throw from the Oval Office. His job: deputy Breaking the news to Baucus, the man Messina calls chief of staff to President Barack Obama. the “single most important influence in my life” and for “I’ve always loved politics,” says Messina, a 1993 whom he has worked five separate times, wasn’t easy.

University of Montana graduate, speaking on a “I was so nervous,” Messina recalls, saying he nearly February afternoon in the heart of the West Wing. “I threw up as he made his way to Baucus’ private Capitol guess I understood very early that if you wanted to office that afternoon. “‘So,’ I make a change and to affect the issues said, ‘Senator Obama called that you care about, the single best “‘So,’ I said, ‘Senator and asked me to be his national way was to elect people that shared chief of staff.’ Max turned to your values.

Obama called and me and said, ‘Of course he has.

“You could run yourself and be asked me to be his You are the best choice.’ one person trying to make change, “And then he looked at me or go elect twenty-five or thirty or national chief of staff.’ and said, ‘So this weekend I am however many people I’ve helped elect Max turned to me losing both of my sons,’ and and have a whole group of people and said, ‘Of course we both started crying.” making the change you believe in.”

Baucus remembers the day At just thirty-nine, Messina’s he has. You are the vividly, beaming as he talks trajectory in politics has been swift. best choice.’ about the “terrific opportunity” Messina first got to know Obama for his off-again, on-again aide, on Capitol Hill, where as chief of whom he calls a “near genius” staff to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) when it comes to politics. Even though Baucus was he was able to closely watch and work alongside the newly elected Democratic senator from Illinois. Obama in the throes of his own Senate re-election bid, letting Messina head off to Chicago to join the presidential would end up hiring Messina barely three years later as his national chief of staff to help him take on Sen. John campaign required no convincing.

“I said, ‘Jim, don’t give it a second thought,’” Baucus McCain (R-Ariz.) for the presidency. says. “He’s such a talented, wonderful person. And like a father, I want the best for him. The more he succeeds, the more quickly he succeeds, the happier I am.”

Messina spent the next five months at Obama’s campaign headquarters plotting strategy, helping manage operations, and making the trains run on time.

The hours were long, but the payoff great. Unlike his first presidential campaign twenty-eight years earlier, Messina didn’t lose this time.

“I think I had been building momentum for election night with Barack,” Messina says of his career.

He had taken a leave from Baucus’ office, but Messina never went back. Instead, Obama kept him close, asking him to help lead his transition by assembling key staff, vetting prospective Cabinet appointees, and preparing the strategy and blueprints for the new administration.

ma’s UM Grad Messina A Key Presidential Aide www.umt.edu/montanan

Montanan spring 2009 |

23

Messina in his White House office

In November, Messina was offered—and accepted—the charge of deputy chief of staff under Rahm Emanuel, the toughas-nails former Chicago congressman whom many say Messina resembles.

Messina brushes aside talk of a likeness. “I don’t think I’m that good.

He’s the best. He’s who everyone else gets measured against.”

But in the few short months since Messina started working at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., he has made his mark. He shares the deputy title with Mona Sutphen; he is charged with operations, she with policy. He fixes things, troubleshoots, and works to telegraph political problems before they happen.

“Jim Messina is the most powerful person in Washington that you haven’t heard of,” says Dan Pfeiffer, deputy White House communications director. “Whenever the president or his chief of staff has a problem that needs to be fixed, they turn to him.”

Messina’s relationships on Capitol Hill may be his strongest asset. Having worked for Baucus and served as top aide to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), Messina knows both sides of Congress intimately. That, more than anything else, makes him valuable, White House officials say—particularly for a president trying to pass an ambitious agenda in a time of economic crisis.

“There’s no question he’s an integral part of that operation,” says Barrett Kaiser, Baucus’ spokesman and Messina’s close friend of more than a decade.

Not only was Messina involved in helping Obama narrow his list of Cabinet nominees, he also was called in when they ran into trouble. In the case of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for instance, Messina was dispatched to temper Senate concerns after it was revealed that the former New York Federal Reserve president 24 | spring 2009 Montanan

the ambassador’s guest at dinner that night.

“Messina’s always been fixing things as long as I can remember,” Kaiser says.

M

failed to pay his taxes on time. That reputation has become so cemented that in a recent Washington Post article Messina was dubbed “the fixer.”

The moniker isn’t surprising, particularly for those who know him. Messina loves a challenge—the more vexing, the better. And it’s always been that way.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, says Messina is “the type of guy that you are thankful to be working with instead of against.”

Kaiser remembers his first interaction with Messina in 1998. Kaiser was president of the Associated Students of The University of Montana, and Baucus was heading to Missoula to host the Chinese ambassador’s visit to the campus. Messina, then one of Baucus’ legislative assistants in Washington, smelled trouble.

Fearing student-led protests over Tibet, Messina called on Kaiser to negotiate a deal: Convince the students to take their objections downtown and avoid a direct, and politically embarrassing, interface on campus with Baucus and the ambassador. It worked, and Kaiser ended up as Baucus’ and

essina left Idaho for Big Sky Country in 1988 as a stick-thin, freshfaced, UM freshman. The son of public school and city government workers, neither of whom had much interest in politics, Messina’s adoption of Montana as his new home and embrace of campaigns and government as a career were seemingly organic.

He took to Montana almost instantly as he walked onto Missoula’s campus. He was a quick devotee of Grizzly football (he says he could die happy if Obama ever makes it to a game) and spent little time deciding on a political science major. Within two years Messina pursued an internship in Helena during the 1991 legislative session.

He had signed up late and had to settle for a job as an aide to a handful of rankand-file lawmakers. Yet within days, Messina managed to land a better job doing press for the House Democratic leadership.

By the time the session ended, Messina had won three job offers from the three Democrats running for governor in 1992: Dorothy Bradley, Mike McGrath, and Frank Morrison. Messina chose Morrison.

Morrison “got stomped” in the primary, Messina recalls, but that loss didn’t dissuade him from wanting to work on campaigns.

The day after Morrison’s defeat, Messina says the state Democratic Party called him and hired the “hippie from Missoula” to run legislative races in Eastern Montana.

A few more losses would come Messina’s way. The early 1990s weren’t strong years for Montana Democrats, particularly in the eastern half of the state. That year, Messina says, only two of his legislative candidates won.

Scott McColloch, then the incumbent Democratic House member from Billings, was one of Messina’s two success stories that year. McColloch, now a field director for the MEA-MFT, remembers a “skinny kid with big glasses showing up at my door” one evening to say he was running the campaign.

McColloch was dubious at best, saying he didn’t believe a college student from Missoula knew much about politics, much less how to run races at the opposite end of the state. But McColloch—who admits to walking lazily into his re-election that year—

says, “He convinced me that maybe I should be out there working.

“Jim knew how to win races. He just had that sense that you’ve got to go out there and do the hard work,” he says. “He taught me that you got to be out there, not just throwing signs up, but letting people see you face-to-face. Jim always stressed that you’ve got to listen, and they’ve got to do most of the talking.”

“He never sleeps,” adds Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), whom Messina quietly advised during his successful 2006 challenge of Sen. Conrad Burns.

“He works endlessly on these campaigns.”

Dan Kemmis, former Missoula mayor whose 1993 re-election bid Messina also managed, says for a young kid—Messina was finishing up at UM at the time Kemmis’ race kicked off—he clearly had a very slim learning curve. Messina, Kemmis says, “just had an innate sense of how to do all of it.”

K

emmis’ campaign was a challenge. The city recently had been annexed, and Messina had to help Kemmis overcome an early 12-percentage point deficit to Republican Mark Helean.

By galvanizing angry female voters in the aftermath of a bombing of the nearby Blue Mountain Clinic, which performed abortions, Messina hatched a winning strategy.

“That was the first time I realized that negative campaigning could be very effective,” Messina says.

After Kemmis, there would be numerous other campaigns. Messina traveled to New York and North Dakota, back to Montana, and on to Alaska. Messina won many of those races, but he also lost a few, and he still steams over the defeats.

Besides Obama’s race, Messina considers his role in helping Tester oust Burns his second greatest achievement, while he calls his biggest setback his failure to help former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles (D) topple Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2004.

“I am still haunted by it,” says Messina, who worked on Knowles’ campaign in its final four months. “I know I am never going to lose again.”

Though he often flies below the radar, Messina’s reputation in Montana and www.umt.edu/montanan

Washington is well-known. To his friends, he is as much a workaholic as he is a practical joker. He is loyal and forgiving. Yet Messina isn’t without detractors, and even those close to him say because of the hard realities of politics, Messina has made a few enemies along the way.

Still, even one-time rivals say they respect him.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) got his first real look at Messina in 1996 when he waged an unsuccessful bid to unseat Baucus

“You could run yourself and be one person trying to make change, or go elect twenty-five or thirty or however many people I’ve helped elect and have a whole group of people making the change you believe in.” in the Senate. Rehberg says Messina, who worked on Baucus’ campaign, “just gets it.

He doesn’t have to learn it. You are either born with it or not. And he has it.”

Rehberg and Messina forged a friendship over the last few years when Messina was working as Baucus’ chief of staff. The two men still get together from time to time, taking turns buying each other a beer (Rehberg says it’s Messina’s tab next time).

But Rehberg is under no illusions that if given the chance, Messina wouldn’t try to wrest him of his seat.

“I don’t kid myself for a heartbeat that Messina or Rahm wouldn’t try to beat me if they could,” Rehberg says. “It’s all politics.”

Yet when it comes to friendships, Messina is fiercely loyal. His closest relationships continue to be with current and former Montanans, and are long-lasting. Messina says it’s because he’s Italian.

Once a year, for instance, Messina reassembles with a half-dozen one-time Montana residents for a weeklong trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He even made the trip last December, despite being charged with helping orchestrate Obama’s transition to power.

“He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy,” says Bill Chaloupka, a former UM political science professor who now teaches at Colorado State University and takes the Mexico trip each year. “There he was with a taco on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, just as comfortable as the rest of us. I was surprised he was going to do it this year. He would have his daily conference call, holding his briefing book and doing it all in a T-shirt and swimming trunks at the top of the house.”

D

ave Hunter, clerk of the Montana House and a longtime Montana Democratic operative, says Messina—while he can’t seem to keep a girlfriend for very long—never abandons a friend. Hunter, a close friend who met Messina seventeen years ago during the 1992 gubernatorial primary, calls him “the same kind of grounded guy” he’s always been, regardless of who signs his paychecks.

For Messina, it all leads back to Montana.

He says he is as connected to the place as he is to its people. In his will, he has instructed that his ashes be spread across the University’s “M.” He boasts of his land in Bozeman, and the home he has in Missoula.

Asked about his future, Messina says only two things are certain—it will include Montana and politics.

“I’m going to be that seventy-year-old guy managing city council races in Missoula, just going negative,” Messina says. “That’s how I want to die.”

Erin P. Billings ’95 is the senior news editor at Roll Call, a newspaper and Web site exclusively devoted to covering Congress. She began editing full time in 2008 after having spent more than a dozen years working as a reporter on Capitol Hill and at the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jay Driscoll ’95.

Montanan spring 2009 |

25

Will Digital

kill The Radio Star?

College station strives to stay relevant as music consumption changes 26 | spring 2009 Montanan

I

By Jacob Baynham Photos by Todd Goodrich

t’s two minutes to nine and three degrees outside on a wintry morning in March. Bleary-eyed students trickle across the Oval, carrying coffee to their morning classes.

Campus is quiet.

But inside a small studio in the University Center, a handful of students have been awake for hours. It’s show time. Lindsay Alvestad, a senior in broadcast journalism, has headphones on her ears, a sheet of paper in her hand, and a microphone in her face.

Knuckles rap on the glass pane that separates the music studio from the news. “One and a half,” says the disc jockey on the other side.

“Guys, get your scripts read,” Alvestad shouts to two student volunteers outside the studio. “We’ve got a minute and a half.”

Emily Creasia, a freshman from Helena, scans her script again.

Next to her, Jake Stevenson, a sophomore from Boston, reads his sports news for the fifth time.

“Ten seconds,” Alvestad yells.

The red “On Air” light illuminates outside the studio. Alvestad leans into the soundboard and rolls the catchy music of the newscast introduction. “Good morning, Missoula,” she says. “I’m Lindsay Alvestad and these are our top headlines ...”

Conrad is retired now, and most of the bands and even the genres that KBGA plays are not from his generation. But he still tunes into the station himself from time to time—especially when he’s exercising. “I find it compatible with my elliptical machine at home,” he says. “It’s good music. Good music is good music no matter when it comes from.”

Sometimes it’s all the advice he can give the staff just to remind them that they are still students, and that all the hours they put into the station shouldn’t detract them from their studies. For them, “it’s really a labor of love,” Conrad says.

Love is certainly Ashley Barber’s motivation. Standing in

KBGA’s poster-plastered main office, he says, “It isn’t really about the money here; we just all love college radio.”

Barber works between thirty and thirty-five hours a week at the station but gets paid for only twenty, at close to minimum wage. It doesn’t seem to faze him. “I love the people that I work with. I love to be a part of people’s lives in choosing what they listen to,” he says. “Music is related to mood.” Barber loves putting people in a good mood.

Welcome to KBGA college radio at The University of

Montana, riding Missoula’s airwaves at 89.9 megahertz FM. It’s the only station in town where a random tune-in is just as likely to spill bubblegum pop from your speakers as it is Elvis Costello, punk rock, or the choral arrangements of Eric Whitacre.

KBGA was founded by students in 1996. It operates out of two studios and two offices in the UC. A tower on Waterworks Hill, just north of campus, transmits the 1,000-watt station for a radius of 30 miles—the mountains stop the signal from going any farther. The station is managed by nine part-time staff, and the news is gathered by nine part-time reporters. All the employees are students. One hundred thirty unpaid DJs work shifts around the clock to ensure that the music is always spinning. Thirty volunteer newscasters read the news twice a day, Monday through Friday.

For all of these efforts, KBGA has been named Best Radio Station in town by the Missoula Independent’s reader poll seven times in twelve years.

“What’s remarkable about this operation is that it runs seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, all year, all through the holidays, without a single full-time employee,” says Terry Conrad, a KBGA staff adviser since 1997.

Conrad knows a little bit about the challenges of starting a radio station and keeping it on the air. In 1973, he helped found Missoula’s Montana Public Radio station, KUFM. Conrad meets with the students once a week after his jazz show on KUFM. He offers advice when asked, but mainly he just listens. If a problem arises that he’s seen before, he’ll share his experience.

“I’m sort of the keeper of the history,” he says. “If they want to do something that’s been done before, I can tell them how it went.” www.umt.edu/montanan

KBGA Program Director Ashley Barber became known for his 2 to 6 a.m. graveyard show on the station.

Like most KBGA staff members, Barber first got involved with the station as a volunteer DJ. He held a graveyard show on Saturdays from 2 to 6 a.m. What music did he select for the Friday night revelers who were a large part of his audience? Classical.

“You’d think people would want to hear death metal on their way home from the bars, but it was surprisingly popular,” Barber says. He called it “DJ Crash’s Feng Shui Music Show,” because he thought it might help restore order in people’s minds after a long night.

That was three years ago. Barber is now KBGA’s program director. A sophomore studying digital filmmaking, He wears a fashionable T-shirt and has studs in both of his earlobes. Surrounding him are shelves upon shelves of CDs. Crates of vinyl records sit on the studio counters, all part of KBGA’s total library of roughly 14,000 albums. Estimating a conservative forty minutes per album, that’s enough music to play continuously for 385 days without Montanan spring 2009 |

27

repeating a song. And that’s not even counting the music The KBGA staff is looking for the resources to create DJs bring in from their own collections. a new Web site that offers listeners, including alumni and It’s this diversity of content that keeps listeners tuned parents of students, the capability of “tuning in” to a live in and wins respect among competitors. One station feed of the station. People would then be able to listen to often contending for Best Radio Station awards is it across campus or across the globe, with just the click of Missoula’s 103.3 The Trail. The Trail is a much bigger a mouse. Most major radio stations these days have this station than KBGA—it’s owned by Simmons Media capability.

Group, which operates thirty-one stations in eight KBGA streamed music on its Web site several years states—but nevertheless gives its college counterpart ago, although only a couple dozen people could listen at props where props are due. “We view (KBGA) more as one time. The station was forced to remove the function a friend” than a competitor, says Trail DJ Tracy Lopez, when music licensing companies started lobbying who launched her own radio career at the UM station.

Congress to pass new legislation that would make “We enjoy those music lovers out there who donate their streaming prohibitively expensive. The legislation has time to run a radio station the way they do.” since been mired in appeals by radio stations around the One thing that keeps Barber putting country and is unlikely to pass.

“That’s what I love in the hours is the support he feels from KBGA’s outgoing general manager, about this station,” the Missoula community. The seven Best Timothy Donahue, estimates it would Radio Station plaques hanging from cost $8,000 to establish a new Web he says. “You can the walls are testament to that. But the site with streaming capability. It may bring your own community’s backing goes further. This seem small, but it’s a hard sum to music. You can February the KBGA staff exceeded their squeeze into an annual budget that is fundraising goal of $10,000 in their annual play old or new or already stretched.

Radio-thon for the second year in a row.

“It’s a process that takes awhile,” in-between.”

Until 2003, the station was funded Donahue says, “because we have to be entirely through student fees. But when the budget fiscally sound before we take a leap like that.” started falling short, KBGA began enlisting public The station is preparing for that jump by digitizing its support in a campaign drive similar to that of Montana musical library. Employees are donating their free time Public Radio. The $12 annual student fee, the Radioto this effort, individually copying 14,000 CDs onto the thon, the underwriting of local businesses, and a handful office server. It takes a lot of time. of concerts every year give KBGA an annual operating “After two months, we probably have about 5 percent budget of $179,000—usually just enough to cover costs. of the library digitized,” says Music Director Ben Weiss, who recently was elected to replace Money isn’t the only obstacle KBGA tackles every Donahue as general year to survive. The station also has the daunting task manager. The pile of staying relevant to its listeners as music consumption of CDs on Weiss’ goes through its most dramatic changes since the desk—albums sent invention of the gramophone. People are no longer by record labels confined to the radio when seeking new tunes. Music and promotion lovers now can listen to the hottest new hits on Web sites such as MySpace, download them on iTunes, stream companies hoping to get their artists them on Pandora.com, or even have them sent to their airtime—is not mobile phones.

“In this day and age, people aren’t as likely to listen to speeding up the process. It’s Weiss’ the radio as in the past,” Barber admits. “But it’s not like job to listen to each they’ve stopped making radios.” of them—about He points to the continued success of KBGA’s 100 per week—to Radio-thon as indication that the station’s audience is determine what broad and supportive, despite the new music gizmos. gets a place on the But Barber and his colleagues want to make the station more accessible to everyone by streaming it on their Web shelf and what gets tossed. A cardboard site so that people with or without radios can tune in box full of discards anywhere in the world. sits behind him.

He drives this point home by stepping outside the “I’m music studio and closing the door. “We’re five feet away overwhelmed with from the studio,” he says, “and yet if we don’t have a music here,” says radio, we can’t hear anything.” That’s not good enough Weiss. “Not that I’m for Barber. Not in the twenty-first century.

KBGA Music Director Ben Weiss listens to about 100 CDs each week to decide what gets played.

28 | spring 2009 Montanan

Haywood Brown, or H-Rap, is KBGA’s longest-serving DJ. He often dances to his music while shaking a tambourine.

complaining.” Seventy percent of what he listens to ends up in the toss box. To be fair, he plays each CD for at least two minutes before making a decision, though he says “sometimes I know in ten seconds.”

“It’s difficult, though,” Weiss says, “because even if it’s garbage, it’s someone’s art.”

Photos by Todd Goodrich

One recent afternoon, the fingers of

Haywood Brown, a tall sixty-two-year-old retired welder from South Carolina, hovered over a shelf of CDs that had made Weiss’ cut. Brown was picking out some tunes for his Saturday morning show.

Brown—or H-Rap, as he’s known on Missoula’s airwaves—is the nephew of the late blues legend Nappy Brown and is KBGA’s longest-serving DJ. He’s been hosting a soul and funk show since 2000, and is one of the station’s most distinctive voices. On the taped promotion for his show, Brown says he’s “the man that puts www.umt.edu/montanan

more dip in your hip, more glide in your stride. I separate the music from the wax.”

With his flared jeans, collared red velvet jacket, and boxy disco shades, Brown looks like he just stepped out of a club in the late ’60s, “back when love was free,” as he says.

He came to Montana with his wife in 1997.

“Missoula,” he proclaimed at the time. “That sounds like a soul name.”

When Brown first started as a DJ, he was nervous in the studio. But it didn’t take him long to find his groove. “I thought, ‘I gotta have some flavor,’” he remembers. “I gotta have some action. I gotta have some romance. I gotta be kind of suave.” To perfect his radio voice, he started reciting tongue-twisters during his part-time job as a school bus driver.

Brown enjoys the freedom at KBGA, which allows him to play whatever music he chooses. “That’s what I love about this station,” he says. “You can bring your

own music. You can play old or new or in-between.”

After nine years in the studio, Brown’s passion for radio runs undiminished—a zeal he shares with his colleagues at KBGA. “It’d take a ball and chain to pull me from this place,” he says. “Anything that you love, if you love it, you’ll get up for it, go to bed for it, and you’ll think how you can do it better.”

Jacob Baynham graduated from the UM School of Journalism in 2007. He spent the following year freelancing in Asia—from Hong Kong to Afghanistan— publishing his stories and photos in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Toronto Star, the San Antonio Express-News, and Newsweek. He is currently a news editor with University Relations.

Montanan spring 2009 |

29

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bookshelf

By Ginny Merriam

Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America

By Barry Gough

Wild River Pioneers: Adventures in the Middle Fork of the Flathead, Great Bear Wilderness and Glacier National Park

By John Fraley

Harbour Publishing, 2008, 414 pages, $34.95

Big Mountain Publishing, 2008,

Historian and Canadian Studies professor Barry Gough looks at the struggle between Great Britain and the United States for ownership of British Columbia in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The historical characters in the international drama include Alexander Mackenzie and David Thomson against rivals Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark. Gough, a UM alum, was the founding director of Canadian Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

230 pages, $16.95

You don’t have to have bushwhacked through devil’s club and alders or forded the Middle Fork of the Flathead River with your blue jeans tied around your neck to enjoy John Fraley’s stories from the wild region. Fraley, who earned fish and wildlife management degrees from both major Montana universities and has worked in the field for thirty years, tells historical stories of Lake McDonald homesteader George Snyder, Nyack Flats bootlegger Josephine Doody, and others.

The Outdoor Dutch Oven Cookbook, Second Edition

By Sheila Mills The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008, 200 pages, $18.95

Those of us who still cook out of Sheila Mills’ first book of Dutch oven recipes will greet a second edition with open pots. Sheila and her husband, Dave, live in Boise and have operated Rocky Mountain River Tours on the Middle Fork of Idaho’s Salmon River for thirty-two years. But you don’t have to be afloat to make Aioli Centennial Chicken or Yampa River Trapper’s Pie. Her food is great at home, too. She grew up in Glendive and earned an undergraduate degree at UM in 1967.

Savages & Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire Through Indian Territory

Requiem for Locusts

By Wendy Parciak

By Paul VanDevelder

Two Canoes Press, 2008, 432 pages, $27.95

Yale University Press, 2009, 305 pages, $26

In Missoula resident Wendy Parciak’s first novel, a mentally ill young woman, Marzita, is a newcomer to her Locust Street neighborhood. Marzita doesn’t follow the social conventions that keep her neighbors behind their doors and fences. She brings the diverse characters around her out of themselves, and they begin to communicate.

Parciak’s sister lives with a mental illness, so her understanding is firsthand. Parciak earned a doctorate in ecology at UM and has worked as a wilderness ranger and a biologist. Her novel is a recent Montana Book Award Honor Book.

Journalist Paul VanDevelder sets out to tell the story of the American government’s immoral treatment of the Native Americans who lived here first.

Already praised by Montana writer William Kittredge as an “exceptionally meaningful and useful account,” the forthcoming book uses an 1851 federal treaty with a dozen tribes as its jumpingoff point. The treaty gave the tribes perpetual ownership of 1.1 million square miles of the West, but the government soon broke its promise and then did so again throughout history, which resonates even today, VanDevelder writes. He is a UM School of Journalism graduate. www.umt.edu/montanan

If you are a UM alum with a recent book release, don’t forget about your alma mater. To be considered for Bookshelf, you must send a copy of the book, along with any press materials and contact information, to: Montanan, University Relations, 325 Brantly Hall, Missoula, MT 59812.

Submission of materials does not guarantee that your work will be featured.

Montanan spring 2009 |

31

In this bear market there’s no better time than now to

invest in the bear.

The University of Montana is a solid investment. Our state’s economic engine runs on an educated workforce.

Supporting higher education today will result in the teachers, researchers and leaders of tomorrow.

The University of Montana is financially sound and continues to produce the strong minds needed to solve today’s complex problems.

Your support will help UM students through undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships. These eager young minds need your help, now more than ever.

To learn how to invest in the bear, please call the UM Foundation at 800-443-2593 or go to www.umt.edu/umf.

Photos Courtesy of Kari Swartz Dilloo

UM foundation

Getting A Leg Up K Business class fosters professional connections in Northwest cities

ari Swartz Dilloo recalls graduating as a marketing student at UM in 1997 and then heading for Seattle—even though she knew just two people there and didn’t have a job waiting.

The adjustment and transition was tough, but through hard work and perseverance, Swartz Dilloo carved out a career in public relations. After spotting a classified ad, she landed her first job at the marketing and communications firm Publicis. Over the years, her responsibilities and experience increased. She currently serves as a group public relations manager for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 games and entertainment system.

Given her strong ties to UM, Swartz Dilloo wanted to help new Grizzly graduates make an easier transition from UM classrooms and small Montana towns to careers in cities outside the state. So she and other members of the UM School of Business Administration’s Marketing & Management Advisory Board met with several members of the school’s faculty. They devised a summer class, Marketing Field Experience, which debuted in 2007.

The course has since helped UM students meet and network with professionals—many of whom are UM grads at companies in Portland, Spokane, and Seattle, cities where they might one day secure employment. The students research the companies, polish their résumés, www.umt.edu/montanan

and practice their interviewing skills under the direction of School of Business Administration Adjunct Instructor Sherry Liikala.

After much preparation, the students travel to Seattle and Portland. Swartz Dilloo arranges sessions with executives, recruiters, and employees who are still new in their careers. Discussion topics include what goes into an average workday, what executives look for in new hires, how to make a good impression, and what career paths are available. The students forge contacts with key people in each community. “(Students) are able to establish important links with the people they meet,” Swartz Dilloo says. “Good first impressions, especially in business, really can help open doors.”

In addition to time at Microsoft, the students will visit professionals at Edelman, a global public relations firm that also is one of Swartz Dilloo’s previous employers.

“It feels so gratifying when the students tell you how this course has ‘changed their lives,’” Swartz Dilloo says. “That’s the motivation, when you see your work make a difference on a very personal and individual level.”

Liikala also counsels the students on the importance of follow-up, requiring them to send thank-you notes and often Griz gear to the people they have met on the trip.

UM’s business school and the

students have benefited greatly from this field Above: The 2008 Marketing experience course, Field Experience class visits says Jeff Shay, chair Microsoft in Seattle to of the Department network with professionals; of Management and Inset: Swartz Dilloo helped Marketing. create the class.

“Kari was one of three [marketing & management advisory] board members who took a leadership role in making the course happen,” Shay says. “Over the past three years, many students enrolled in the course have been offered and have taken jobs at the companies they visit.

“Without her professional connections, the whole Seattle portion of the trip would not be possible. We are truly fortunate to have Kari as an engaged member of our board.”

Swartz Dilloo says her key focus on the board has been to help students successfully jump into their first careers after graduating from UM. “The work I’ve been fortunate enough to do on the advisory board for the last six years has made me feel like I’ve really been able to make a positive impact,” she says.

—Pamela J. Podger

Montanan spring 2009 |

33

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ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS President

Patrick M. Risken ’81 Spokane, WA

President-elect

aboutalumni ’40s Bill Jones Receives Montana Alumni Award At Charter Day 2009

Sharilyn McGuire Campbell ’87 Redmond, WA

’48, Chevy Chase, Md., sent a photo of two homes that used to be located on the Prescott property on campus. He writes, “There were three very Joseph Saltsman

Vice President

Thomas J. Dimmer ’85 Williamston, MI

Past President

Marcia Ellen Holland ’76 Missoula

Saltsman

Photo by Todd Goodrich

Board of Directors

modest houses (shacks we called them) about 50 yards north of the Prescott House.”

James Bartell ’63 Kildeer, IL

Eric D. Botterbusch ’87 Everett, WA

Brandon Byars ’93

Robert F. “Bob”

Portland, OR Darien, CT

Susan C. English ’72 Billings

Scott Horsley ’73 Scottsdale, AZ

Dawn Craven Lochridge ’85 Missoula

Photo of Firehammer by Clay Lomneth/Reno Gazette-Journal)

Jon I. Mathews ’84 Boise, ID

Keli Wenz McQuiston ’00 Missoula

Erin Rogge Niedge ’05 Miles City

Susan P. Munsinger ’90 Kalispell

Marnie McMeel Prigge ’73 Butte

Geannine Theresa Rapp ’92 Great Falls

Robert D. Ross ’71 Salt Lake City

Bernd A. Schulte ’65 Ocean Ridge, FL

Zane G. Smith ’55 Springfield, OR

Gregory K. Stahl ’82 Missoula

UM Alumni Association

Bill Johnston ’79, ’91 Executive Director

406-243-5211 877-UM-ALUMS www.grizalum.com

If you’ve ever watched a UM Homecoming parade, you’ve most likely seen UM President George Dennison and his wife, Jane, wave from atop the rumble seat of a baby-blue 1984 Excalibur Roadster patterned after a1937 Mercedes Roadster. For years Missoulian William Evan “Bill” Jones has donated his Excalibur for just this occasion. His generosity in providing some of the parade’s finest vintage cars is just one of the reasons UMAA honored Bill with its Montana Alumni Award at Charter Day. Other recipients of Charter Day awards are Jessie Davie, author of UM’s first Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the ASUM Student Service Award; Phil Condon, environmental studies program associate professor, the Robert T. Pantzer Presidential Humanitarian Award; James and Joy Mariska, Billings, the Neil S. Bucklew Presidential Service Award; Jean Luckowski, School of Education professor, the Montana Faculty Service Award; Jakki Mohr, School of Business Administration professor, the George M. Dennison Presidential Faculty Award for Distinguished Accomplishment; and Jodi Johnson Moreau, the Alumni Association’s off-campus events coordinator, the George M. Dennison Presidential Staff Award for Distinguished Accomplishment.

Keep Us Posted. Send your news to Betsy Holmquist, The University of Montana Alumni Association, Brantly Hall, Missoula, MT 59812. Go to www.grizalum.com and click on “Class Notes,” fax your newes to 406-243-4467, or call 1-877-UM-ALUMS (877-862-6867). Material in this issue reached our office by February 27, 2009.

Note: the year immediately following an alum’s name indicates either an undergraduate degree year or attendance at UM. Graduate degrees from UM are indicated by initials.

Snowbirds/Sunbirds! Whenever you change your mailing address, please contact the alumni office. Let us know where you are and when. Thank you. www.umt.edu/montanan

’49, Reno, Nev., received the Bronze Star on July 7, 2008, sixty-two years after his service with the U.S. infantry in Italy, France, and Germany. Bob previously received the Combat Infantry Badge and two Battle Stars. A Multiple Lines insurance adjuster for many Firehammer years, Bob plans to attend his sixtieth UM class reunion in May. Firehammer

Craig W. Crawford ’79

’50s

’50, J.D. ’51, Miles City, received the 2008 Association of Community College Trustees Regional Trustee Leadership Award for the Western Region at the annual Community College Leadership Congress in New York City this past fall. Jim attended the congress with his wife, Carol James P. Lucas

Dunstan Lucas

’63, his daughter, Leslie Lucas Fitzpatrick ’89, Montanan spring 2009 |

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aboutalumni South Jordan, Utah, and MCC President Stefani Gray Hicswa ’91. A practicing attorney in Miles City for more than fifty years, Jim has been Lucas a member of the MCC College Athletic Booster Club and a member and president of the College Board of Trustees and the College Endowment Board. Jim has served as Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives, a member of Kiwanis, a county attorney, and a Montana Ambassador. He also has been a member of the board of directors for Mountain States Legal Foundation (Denver), the Montana Chamber of Commerce, the UM Foundation, and the Burton K. Wheeler Center in Bozeman.

Alta BURLESON Foss

’55 spent ten summers pursuing an education degree, while doing ranch work between all Rabe

Rabe

her classes. She taught school for eighteen years before receiving her UM degree and eighteen years after receiving it. From 1951 to 1968, Alta and her husband, Lester Foss, ranched at the Bar 93 on Bass Creek while Alta taught in Corvallis and Florence. She finished her teaching career at a fourroom school at Acme, Wyo. Following Lester’s death, Alta traveled the world and became an accomplished artist, specializing in oils and china paints. At seventy Alta married Allen Rabe. She and Allen square-danced, taught “55 Alive” workwww.umt.edu/montanan

shops, wintered in Arizona, and eventually moved into assisted living in Sheridan, Wyo. After Allen died in 2002, Alta moved to Red Lodge to be near her daughter and son-in-law. At ninety-five Alta still plays a mean game of cribbage and enjoys visits from her family and friends.

Richard D. Woods

’56, Chicago, has written Obituaries from the Saco Independent, Saco, Montana, 1912-1975.

A retired college professor, Woods researched his family’s history using newspaper microfilms of the Saco Independent that the Montana Historical Society Library loaned Chicago's Harold Washington Library. “I love obituaries,” he says.

“They give you a lot of the culture of a place.” Woods is now writing about the railroads that crisscrossed northern Montana and the impact of the Works Progress Administration on the arts of Montana’s northern tier.

’60s

The fortieth reunion of the class of 1969 will be held at Homecoming, October 910. Contact the Office of Alumni Relations for further details.

Sydney Sherwood ’65 and James G. Webb ’66 were married January 3, 2009, in Tigard, Ore. Jim, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, works as a defense contractor at Offutt Air

Sherwood and Webb

Don MacCarter

’66,

and his wife, Jane ’67, live in Paradise Valley, an hour’s drive north of Yellowstone Park. Don recently won first prize in a national photo contest sponsored by Outdoor Photographer Magazine with this image, “Autumn in Yellowstone.” “I took the shot on the last day of autumn, literally,” Don says.

“The following day, leaves were ripped from the trees in the first storm of winter.” His photograph was featured in the April 2009 issue of the magazine, which is the foremost U.S. publication on outdoor photography. Don retired in 2004 from a twenty-one-year career with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and relocated to his home state of Montana.

Stahl MacCarter

Force Base in Omaha, Neb. Sydney, executive director of the Tigard Good Neighbor Center, also is the Tigard City Council president. Named a 2008 Woman of Achievement by the Oregon Commission for Women, Sydney was honored for securing affordable housing for families at risk and focusing federal attention on homelessness.

Barry M. Gough, M.A. ’66, Victoria, British Columbia, has published Fortune’s a River: The

Gough

Collision of Empires in Northwest America with Harbour Publishing.

Gough’s work examines how British Columbia became British and how Oregon, Washington, and Alaska became American.

The book was shortlisted for the 2008 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Book Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 Writers’ Trust Nereus Non-Fiction Prize.

Gough was founding director of Canadian Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of King’s College London, and Life Member of the Association of Canadian Studies. He has written about the history of the Pacific Coast for almost four decades.

Einar O. Venvold,

M.B.A. ’69, wrote from Oslo, Norway, on Christmas Eve, “In 2009 it will be forty years since I graduated from the business school, probably as the first Norwegian with an M.B.A. from UM. I plan to come to Homecoming, where I know I will meet a few other U.S. friends from that time. I will be retired by then, after having worked around the globe for the last thirty years for Det Norske Veritas [an international risk management company], the last years heavily involved in China. Last week, for some strange reason, I was able to watch UM’s last two football games from my living room in Oslo. Two years back I was running a management training program

in Switzerland and was introduced to a Chinese professor, who in 1988 got her degree from UM. She had even had some of the same professors as I had in 1969. You talk about a small world. Her name is Winter Nie, M.B.A. ’88.”

[Nie is professor of operations and service management at IMD, an international business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.]

’70s

Thomas L. Brown,

M.A. ’71, an artist in Queenstown, New Zealand, had his painting Otago Winemakers selected for the nationwide exhibit “Looking Down the Barrel: The Face of New Zealand Wine.” The exhibit honors the people

Brown

and areas of New Zealand responsible for the country’s famous wines. Tom has held exhibits in the United States, Peru, and Montanan spring 2009 |

37

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aboutalumni New Zealand and recently was commissioned to paint two works for the coronation of King George Teupou V of Tonga. Tom and his wife, Elizabeth, invite UM and Montana friends to drop by their gallery in The Old Cheese Factory when traveling down under.

Michael M. Coonrod

’72 has been on the piano faculty of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan since 1976. He has performed throughout the United States and Poland, specifically at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.

Last December, Michael returned to UM to play music by Russian composers for the President's Lecture Series, “a significant professional return to my childhood home, and in honor of my piano teacher Lucien Hut,” he writes. Michael and his wife, Jean Merce Coonrod ’72, have three children: David, a landscaper with two children;

Coonrod

Michelline, a dancer in Las Vegas; and Robert, a jazz guitarist/composer.

Michael has three recordings to his credit, the most recent a two-CD set of solo piano music by Franz Schubert. Browse his Web site at www.michaelcoonrod.com.

Norene Howatt

’73, her husband, Tom Peterson, Peterson

Kathy Zarnick

’82, and her husband, Tim Jackson ’79, M.B.A. ’81, traveled to Ireland last summer.

Jackson

www.umt.edu/montanan

Kathy (left) and Norene (right) are pictured below at the Stone Circle in Kenmare on the summer solstice, June 21. Norene writes, “Our Griz rain gear came in handy several times on the trip along with several Griz growls while Tim and Tom drove on the opposite side of the road.” Norene and Kathy share a classroom and teach full time with the Billings Public Schools Adult Education Program.

“Griz blood runs deep in our families,” Norene writes. “The Jacksons have four daughters, two of whom attended UM. Kelly Jackson ’06 lives in Whitefish, and Sandy

describe what he wrote,” Lavonne explains, “a word

that kept him and his work from being taken too seriously.” Visit www. pomesbymark.com for more information.

Craig R. Kuchel ’74, M.S. ’77, a thirty-one year veteran biology teacher at Florence Carlton High School in Florence, Peterson & Jackson

Jackson will graduate in May 2009. Our son, Brett Peterson ’04, and his wife, Kristina Erickson Peterson ’04, live in Polson. Brett works for UPS, and Kristina teaches at Two Eagle River School in Pablo.”

Lavonne Brown

’74, Ismay, her children, Levi, Luke, and Lona, friends, and other family members have compiled and published Pomes by a Cow Psychologist, writings by and about her late husband, Mark Forman ’74. Mark died in a ranch accident in March 2008, leaving behind a collection of poems that he began writing while taking poetry classes from UM’s Richard Hugo. “‘Pomes’ was Mark’s word to Forman

received the Walmart Teacher of the Year Award in October. Craig teaches an advanced honors biology class, an advancedplacement section, and basic biology classes. He and his wife, Joan, who teaches at Missoula’s Russell Elementary School, have two sons.

Pattie Cagney Sheehan

’75 left a thirty-year career in advertising and marketing to open Second Act, a boutique in downtown Chicago that sells post-

Sheehan

BIRTHS Marcus Theodore Shimek to Brenda Shimek ’00 and Cary Shimek, February 10, 2009, Missoula Wyatt George Schuster to Ted G. Schuster ’98 and Carrie Vogel Schuster, January 14, 2009, Missoula Georgia Hazel to Yael Anne Livny ’02 and D. Vincent Briggeman ’96, December 3, 2008, Washington, D.C. Bennett Owen Meier to Amanda Nelson Meier ’04 and Bernie Meier, November 24, 2008, Longmont, CO Finn Robert Beery to Katie Collins Beery ’05 and Derek S. Beery, M.A. ’98, November 11, 2008, Port Angeles, WA Michael Vincent Purpura to Geannine Theresa Rapp ’92 and Michael J. Purpura, November 6, 2008, Great Falls Keira Elizabeth Kelm to Kristin Nielsen Kelm ’01 and Randy Kelm, October 28, 2008, Reserve Quincey Margaret Higgins to Kevin T. Higgins ’99 and Heather M. Higgins, October 7, 2008, Helena breast-surgery prostheses, mastectomy bras, and wigs.

After the death of both parents from cancer, Pattie identified a need for cancer survivors to be served in a private setting, with respect and dignity. Visit her Web site at www.secondactchicago.com.

E.E. “Gene” Davis, Ph.D. ’77, retired as professor emeritus from the Graduate Department of

Davis

Educational Leadership and Instructional Design in the College of Education at Idaho State University. Gene is president/CEO of Leadership for Organizational Effectiveness, a national educational consulting firm. He has been a presenter at national, regional, and state conferences and has more than fifty publications address-

ing policy and practice in K-12 education. Gene established the Journal for Effective Schools, represented the United States as an educational emissary to study the Japanese education system, and was recognized as an Executive Educator 100. He has served on many boards, including the UM School of Education Advisory Board.

Joel L. Voytoski ’77, M.Ed. ’83, superintendent of the Evergreen School District in Kalispell, was named the 2009 Montana Superintendent of the Year. An educator for twenty-eight years, Joel attempts to devote the majority of his time to budget and policy, “the hallmarks of a superintendent’s job,” he says.

’80s

’80, M.A. ’91, Fairfield, Ohio, recently published The Memoirs of Ambassador Henry F. Grady: From the Great War to the Cold War with the University of Missouri Press. An associate professor of John T. McNay

Montanan spring 2009 |

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Get Connected, Stay Connected

Your membership dollars help support alumni outreach programs and scholarships for current students.

Join UMAA today and be among the first to participate in our new social networking program coming soon this spring!

Go to www.GrizAlum.com and join today!

Visit www.GrizAlum.com to check out our new website, register for events, reconnect with friends and explore our online store.

aboutalumni history at the University of Cincinnati, John also has written Acheson and Empire: The British Accent in American Foreign Policy.

Colette Craighead

’81 writes, “A lifelong dream came true in June 2008 with the opening of my antique and home décor shop, The Shops at Station 8 in the historic Great Northern Train Depot in Columbia Falls. I feature Montana artists, jewelry, gifts, and antiques. My Whistlestop Café serves sandwiches, coffees, and desserts. A graphics department team from UM designed my Station 8 logo. Visit us in person or online at www. station8antiques.com.”

Gross

Outcomes of the Indian Adoption Project (19581967) this summer. I enjoyed my years at UM and think fondly of the professors and students who enriched my life.”

Joyce Helena Brusin,

M.F.A. ’85, works as a freelance essayist and technical writer in Missoula.

She recently completed requirements for a Core Curriculum Certification in medical writing and editing from the American Medical Writers Association.

Tom Dimmer ’85, Williamston, Mich., was named director of national individual sales

by Renaissance Life

Christine Congdon

’81, captain in the U.S. Navy and laboratory head at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Va., began a five-month humanitarian mission in March as director of clinical support services aboard the hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort. The ship is visiting countries along the west coast of Central and South America providing medical care in conjunction with various relief agencies.

Howe

Susan Daven Harness

’83, writes from Fort Collins, Colo., “I completed my master’s degree

Dimmer

and Health Insurance Company of America. A twenty-one-year veteran of sales and service, Tom has created pioneering dental benefit programs for a variety of markets.

Named by Employee Benefit Advisor magazine as one of the best group dental representatives in the United States, Tom currently serves as vice president of the UMAA board of directors.

Nichole Mortensen Bergonzi-Goodyear

Harness

in cultural anthropology at Colorado State University in 2006. Edwin Mellen Press will publish my thesis, Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption: www.umt.edu/montanan

’88, San Diego, is president, CEO, and co-founder of Brickfish, noted as one of the world’s top technology startup companies by the Red Herring Global Award it received in January. “We are thrilled and grateful to have been chosen for this industry honor,” says Nichole. “Since our incep-

tion we have worked to revolutionize online marketing, to help brands engage with their conBergonzisumers Goodyear in a highly effective way, and to track that interaction to educate brands on consumer behavior.” UM alumni Kelly Kelleher ’95 and her husband, Jeremy Wiles ’99, also work at Brickfish. Kelly writes, “Nichole has made the uphill battle of working for a startup company one of the most rewarding experiences of both of our working careers. Past winners of the Red Herring Award include Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com, and YouTube, so we’re in good company!”

Jennifer Isern ’89, Washington, D.C., received her doctorate in business administration, specializing in international management, from Nova Southeastern University in March 2008. For her dissertation, Jennifer researched competition in bank sectors in more than one hundred countries and analyzed the competitive effects of mobile banking, payment systems, and credit bureaus. Last fall she taught a graduate level course on financesector development at the Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

’90s

’94, Chicago, director of communications marketing and executive editor of FORUM magazine for Gregory J. Fine

the Association Forum of Chicagoland, was named the Angerosa Research Foundation's “2008 Publishing Trendsetter.”

Greg was noted for spearheading multiple new Web 2.0 social media initiatives, including a digital edition of FORUM, The FORUM Effect blog, a YouTube channel, and podcasts.

Braden Butterfield

’96, Kendallville, Ind., writes, McKinley

“In December 2008, I graduated from Ball State with my master’s in nursing and will be a nurse practitioner in a local internal medicine practice. I also welcomed my second son, Andrew, who joins Matthew, now three.”

Kerry Anderson

’97, M.A. ’01, and husband, Bryce Moore ’98, founded Context Furniture in Detroit, Mich. Their own Moore

NEW LIFETIME MEMBERS The following alumni and friends have made a commitment to the future of the UM Alumni Association by becoming lifetime members. You can join them by calling 877-862-5867 or by visiting our Web site: www.grizalum. com. The Alumni Association thanks them for their support. This list includes all new lifetime members through February 15, 2009.

Oline Veseth Barta ’72, Fort Harrison Steven L. Barta ’71, Fort Harrison Clayton T. Christian ’96, Missoula Dawn M. Christian ’95, Missoula Polly Hodges Eames ’59, Billings Veronica Ryan Falkner ’76, Bremerton, WA Alison H. Fuller ’05, Burlingame, CA Brandon Fuller, Burlingame, CA Brian Lee Gessler ’06, ’07, Nashville, TN Craig C. Greenough ’95, Missoula Betty L. Haack ’72, Bellevue, WA Paul V. Haack ’72, Bellevue, WA Eric M. Hansen ’75, Anchorage, AK Anne M. Spencer Hill ’68, Billings Warren A. Hill ’67, Billings Kitt Ellinghouse Huggins, Missoula Larry T. Huggins ’68, M.B.A. ’75, Missoula Janet Bower Hulme ’68, Missoula Amanda L. Donaldson Jessop ’01, Victor Beverly J. Hughes Kologi ’64, Havre Rebecca A. Liebe ’88, Ridgefield, CT Gregory A. Marose ’69, Hamilton Lucy J. Myklebust Marose ’96, M.Ed. ’07, Hamilton Willard J. Michels, M.B.A. ’71, Plentywood Stephen K. Nelson, Missoula Shannon D. Noble ’97, Missoula Linda D. Osler, M.I.S. ’93, Missoula Lacey Rieker Patterson ’01, Missoula Peter A. Price ’83, Woodinville, WA William A. Rossbach, J.D. ’77, Missoula Rudolph M. Ruana ’60, Vienna, VA Brent P. Russ ’95, Missoula Kristin Schermele ’92, Frenchtown Richard H. Schipporeit ’67, M.Ed. ’74, Missoula Arthur L. Skiftun ’70, ’73, Helena B.A. Ross Smith ’63, Calgary, AB Anna L. W. Tucker ’91, Florence Marjorie Knight Wallinder ’65, M.B.A. ’82, Missoula Sandra R. Williams ’95, M.A. ’97, Ed.D. ’00, Missoula Montanan spring 2009 |

41

2009 FOOTBALL SEASON TICKETS DEADLINE TO RENEW SEASON TICKETS: Season ticket holders have until Monday, June 15, 2009 to pay for their 2009 Grizzly Football To inquire about Season Tickets! purchasing season tickets or to pay for your current season tickets stop by the Adams Center Box Office, or call 1-888-MONTANA or (406) 243-4051.

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pieces, based on the modernism movement and arts and crafts style, incorporate unconventional uses of materials, craftsmanship, and graphic accents.

Kerry and Bryce plan to open a local furniture manufacturing center in Detroit where anyone with a design can make it a reality—on-site and affordably. In 2008 the couple sponsored a Design Democracy competition; the seven best designs were constructed and taken to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City.

Articles on Context Furniture have appeared in many of the nation’s top home and design magazines. To view their work, visit www.contextfurniture.com.

Matthew B. Hayhurst,

J.D. ’98, was recognized as a “Rising Star”—one of the top 2.5 percent of lawyers under the age of forty in the fivestate Northern Rockies region—in Super Lawyers magazine. A shareholder in the Missoula law firm Boone Karlberg, Matt practices all types of law.

“What I enjoy most about the work is how it changes every single day,” Matt says. He and his wife, Lisa Miller Hayhurst ’01, have two sons, Elliott and Charlie.

Jared Amoss ’99 is general manager/operations of the Missoula Osprey Professional Baseball Club.

A telemarketer for the Osprey during their 1999 inaugural season, Jared has been with the club ever since. www.umt.edu/montanan

M.S. ’99, has received tenure at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. A member of the faculty since 2003, David teaches and does research on reconstructing evolutionary and environmental history from geochemical records archived in fossils and sediments. He is currently conducting research in South Africa, the Caribbean, and San Francisco Bay.

and by winning a lottery to hunt a wild buffalo in the Alaskan wilderness in 2005. “Few books of this or any year offer such an immediate and lasting connection with the reality of our long and often tragic interaction with the natural world,” the PNBA release noted. Author of The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, Steven also is a correspondent for Outside magazine, where he’s been a frequent contributor since 2000.

A native of Twin Lake, Mich., Steven splits his time between New York City and Alaska.

Doug Booth, M.S. ’01, started Buckbean Brewing Company in Reno, Nev.,

Kimball

’00

help the environment and local communities.

In the first nine months of its existence, Buckbean donated money, time, and product to more than thirty nonprofits. Doug and his wife, Amy, are expecting their first child in July. Check out the award-winning microbrewery and listen to some beer tunes at www. buckbeanbeer.com.

Tiffany L. Rehbein

Tyler Patrick Kimball

Steven K. Rinella,

’02, Seattle, is a writer turned glass artist whose works can be seen at the Emerson Center of the Arts and Culture in Bozeman [his hometown], the Livingston Center for Arts and Culture, the Pismo Gallery in Denver, and in several galleries in Seattle. Tyler has taken advanced glassblowing at Seattle’s Pratt Fine Arts Center and Pilchuck Glass School. He will be on staff at Pilchuck as a poleturner

Danielle Fansler

’99 and Cliff Gordon, Libby, were married on November 29, 2008. Danielle works for the U.S. Forest Service.

She and Cliff own C & D Pest Control in Libby.

Gordon

’00, ’06, M.A. ’07, a teacher at East High School in Cheyenne, Wyo., was chosen as the winner of the 2008 National Council of English Leadership Development Award by the Wyoming Association of Teachers of English. Tiffany received the award in November at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention in San Antonio, Texas.

M.F.A. ’00, is one of five winners of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association’s 2009 Book Awards for American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. The book was inspired by a buffalo skull

Booth

in April 2008. Doug credits much of his inspiration for running a brewery to his visits to the Big Sky Brewing Company while attending UM. Doug’s resource conservation degree—coupled with his Peace Corps service in Guatemala—keep him connected with ways to

Becca Ayn Deysach,

M.S. ’04, Portland, Ore., has opened her adventurebased writing business, Ibex Studios. She offers postcard prompts, wordsmithing services, and online or in-town workshops. “In 2005,” Becca writes, “I was asked to design and teach a creative writing course for the [UM] Environmental [Studies] Program—and Writing the Wild was born. For three hours every week the world dropped away while ten

’03, Arlington, Va., wrote on January 18, “Tomorrow I will walk through the White House gates for a final time, and when I leave that evening it will be for good. Serving this president has been an unbelievable experience, and being able to see history made from within the White House walls is something I never thought would happen.

Flying on Air Force One, saying ‘Mr. President’ to the man himself, walking through the White House halls, and stepping into the Oval Office are all things that I never dreamed would happen. I feel truly blessed to have experienced it.”

Brock worked in the Office of Political Affairs as an associate director. He served two years in the White House in varying capacities.

Brock Adam Lowrance

Rinella

Steven found in 1999 in the Madison Mountains

this summer. Tyler also is a lead glassblower at Seattle’s Glass Eye and Glassybaby.

“I’m even thinking about writing a novel about the glassblowing scene in Seattle sometime down the line when my work with the actual material doesn’t require my full attention,” Tyler adds. Check out his Web site at www.tylerkimballglass.com.

Lowrance outside Air Force One at a stop in Romania.

Montanan spring 2009 |

43

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aboutalumni of us connected with each other, our pasts, and our most creative selves by exploring, playing, writing, and sharing at the edge of the Clark Fork River.”

Check out her Web site at www.ibexstudios.com.

Kristin Jean Bieri ’05 earned a doctorate in chiropractic from Life Chiropractic College

’04, Kampala, Uganda, and Erin Oelkers ’05, Wilmington, N.C., have been friends since their childhood days in Helena. Colette taught at Helena High and Helena Middle schools following her UM graduation. In 2007 she took a five-week vacation to Africa, which turned into a permanent move. While working for a private company, Colette met a woman who had started a small school in the poverty-stricken Mulago region of Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Last September Erin visited Colette and volunteered at the school. The childrens’ needs were so great that Colette and Erin launched into a project to rebuild the school. “Erin and I decided that we were going to take it upon ourselves to raise the necessary money [$50,000] to build the angels of Mulago a new school,” Colette says. The women held two fundraisers in Helena at Christmas, and on Valentine’s Day Erin hosted a Mulagofest in Wilmington. Early this year in a three-week, “every penny counts” fundraiser, students from three East Helena schools—East Valley Middle School, Radley Elementary, and Eastgate Elementary—collected $3,670 for the Mulago school. The new school is brick, with a concrete floor; a fully-covered roof; doors that lock; closets for storage; and six separate classrooms. The old school was a shack of blue-and-white painted boards nailed together atop a mound of dirt. “For those of you who didn’t get a chance to donate and would still like to, there's good news … we're still accepting donations,” Colette e-mails from buckley_colette@yahoo.com.

Colette Buckley

Bieri

has the longest known migration of any animal on the planet. He is working with Kristina M.

www.umt.edu/montanan

may aug october

Dawson L. Dunning

’05, Belgrade, won a Fulbright Fellowship to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

This past winter he began the ten-month program to study and film two endangered species: the tuatara, a reptile that has been on earth for 200 million years; and the sooty shearwater, a seabird that

Ph.D. ’06, a tuatara expert whom he originally met while she earned a doctorate at UM. Ramstad,

alumni Events 2009

september

West in Hayward, Calif.

She accepted a position with Total Lifestyle Chiropractic on the eastern Gold Coast of Australia and will practice there for three years.

Meagan Brock ’05, ’06, and Jake Pipinich ’06, Moore, Okla., plan to be married August 8, 2009, at Voles Garden in Oklahoma City. Jake will graduate from the Oklahoma City University School of Law in May. Meagan is a doctoral candidate in industrial/ organizational psychology at the University of Oklahoma with an expected graduation date of May 2010. She currently works as an HR specialist at the State of Oklahoma Office of Personnel Management.

Class Reunions: 1939, 1949, 1959 UM Campus 20 Alumni Lecture, Helena

14-16

10-18

International Travel: Iceland

Griz Football/Tailgate, UC Davis Black Studies Reunion/Missoula 15-28 International Travel: Mediterranean Cruise

26 Griz Football/Tailgate, Northern Arizona

9

17-19

Homecoming Week 2009 Homecoming Kickoff Celebration, Southgate Mall

7 Pep Rally, SOS, Bonfire, Fireworks

8, 9 House of Delegates Annual Meeting

9 Distinguished Alumni Awards, Class Reunion 1969, Alpha Tau Omega Reunion, Kappa Alpha Theta 100 years, Kappa Kappa Gamma 100 years, Burgundy Students Reunion, All Alumni Reunion and Dance

10 Homecoming Parade, Football-Griz vs. Cal Poly, Tailgates

4-10

4

For more details, call the Office of Alumni Relations, 877-UM-ALUMS, or visit www.grizalum.com.

A graduate student in Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program, Dawson was the first UM student to receive the $50,000 per year Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholarship. He also received Goldwater and Udall scholarships while at UM. Jesse Robert Washburn

’06, Lake Tapps, Wash., is a Peace Corps volunteer at Gbeogo School for the Deaf in Ghana, West Africa. His Peace Corps Partnership Project involved building dining tables and benches for the school’s 300 students, who had nowhere to sit or eat.

He is now helping set up a library/computer lab for the school, and needs computer equipment and

books, in English, for all ages up to a sixth-grade reading level—children's encyclopedias, picture books, and popular children's classics. E-mail Jesse at juicew33@yahoo.com.

Kendra Kallevig ’08, Washington, D.C., led the workshop “Grassroots Response to the International Climate Talks” at Power Shift ’09 in the nation’s capital in February. Kendra serves as program coordinator for SustainUS: The U.S. Youth Network for Sustainable Development.

She also is helping organize the SustainUS delegation to the United Nations’ climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December to finalize a post-Kyoto international climate treaty.

Washburn Montanan spring 2009 |

45

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aboutalumni In Memoriam To be included in ”In Memoriam,” the UM Alumni Association requires a newspaper obituary or a letter of notification from the immediate family. We extend sympathy to the families of the following alumni, faculty, and friends. Names without class or degree years include UM alumni, employees, and friends.

Hildegarde Weisberg Turner ’27, Sequim, WA Laura Jo Forhan Measure ’32, Kalispell Donna Hoover Metcalf ’35, Washington, D.C. Joseph Frank Crisafulli ’38, Glendive Mabelle Gould Hardy ’38, Missoula Catherine Mary Elder Hughes ’38, Missoula Mary Jane Browne Merhar ’38,

San Diego

William Albert Niemeyer ’38, Hot Springs Thomas Roy Hazelrigg ’39, Olympia, WA Marie Hedges McKimens ’39, Bellevue, WA Charles G. ”Chawky” Miller ’39, Missoula E. Gardner Browlee, J.D. ’40, Missoula Gwen Benson Nottingham ’40, Laurel Cheryl Ratcliff Osterson ’40,

Lake Havasu City, AZ Orlo Johnson’41, Salmon, ID Fred C. Merritt ’41, Honolulu Roma Fullberg Bacon ’42, Missoula Thomas C. Burgess ’42, Lake Oswego, OR Ross Eli Lemire ’42, Billings Arnold Bakken ’43, Missoula Louise Mornout Best ’43, Pinehurst, ID Gretchen Van Cleve Haynie ’43, Billings Janet J. Caras Kares ’43, Missoula David L. Lake ’43, Kalispell Edward V. Voldseth ’44, Cedar Falls, IA Jean Hample Woodlief ’44, Louisville, KY Dorothy Ficke Deschamps ’45, Sun City, AZ Beverly R. McDougal ’45, Philipsburg Randall W. Larson ’46, Sumner, WA Dan H. Lundgren ’46, Kalispell Margaret Trask Maitin ’46, Belgrade Ruth Anderson Nansel ’47, Miles City Hugh Martin Campbell ’48, Phoenix Byron Dodd ’48, Missoula Kay Korn Walterskirchen ’48, Kalispell Charles C. Williams ’48, Anaconda Robert Lee ”Bob” Bracewell ’49, Great Falls John E. Grow ’49, Oroville, CA Joseph Anthony Jonutis ’49, Billings Charles D. Parker ’49, Lolo Paul E. Pflueger ’49, Bellingham, WA Peter H. Pomeroy ’49, Okanogan, WA Robert Vincent Willett, M.Ed. ’49, Great Falls Frank N. Gould Jr. ’50, Moraga, CA Duane J. Hoynes ’50, M.A. ’51, Fort Benton David R. McDonald ’50, Stevensville Harry Thomsen ’50, Colorado Springs, CO Donald Hugh Welsh, M.A. ’50, Glendive George Wood ’50, Missoula Elizabeth Gopian Holt ’51, Sioux Falls, SD JoAnn Kinch Meide ’51, Billings Mary E. Hughes Oliver ’51, J.D. ’52, Freeland, WA www.umt.edu/montanan

George F. Turman ’51, Missoula Melvin L. Yuhas ’51, Alexandria, VA James Ambrose French ’52, Phoenix Dona Jeane Skates Sherbeck ’52, Polson Terese L. Garrett, J.D. ’53, Simi Valley, CA Ralph Lynn Herriott, J.D. ’53, Billings Evelyn Herbig Holzknecht ’53,

Green Valley, AZ

Thomas Edward Kilpatrick ’53, Bothell, WA Otis Larry Packwood J.D. ’53, Billings Susan Kuehn Schwetz ’53, Spokane, WA Eileen Polk Wilson ’53, Whitepine C. ”Pete” Albertson ’54, Burlington, WA William J. ”B.J.” Smith ’54, Dillon Margery Crockett Tede ’54, San Francisco Betty Elmore McCurdy ’55, Houston John Francis O'Malley ’55, M.Ed. ’62, Havre Cresap Story ”Sandy” McCracken ’56, J.D.

’58, Highwood

William E. Miller ’56, Tehachapi, CA Thomas E. Nelson ’56, Billings William E. Nelson ’56, Lewiston, ID Helen Kalanick Maxwell ’57, Big Sandy Van Roger Olsen ’58, Rockville, MD Thomas L. McEacheron ’59, Santa Maria, John E. ”Jack” Fulkerson ’60, Sidney Ruby Quackenbush Lokensgard ’60,

CA

Onalaska, WI

James L. Askin ’61, Green Valley, AZ Duane Wilfred Everard ’61, Eugene, OR Noreen Kiley Hosie ’61, Lodi, CA H.E. ”Hal” Wight ’61, Lake Havasu City, AZ Julie Kay Raffety Carter ’62, Tucson, AZ Gail M. ”Franke” Korman ’62, Lolo Linda Kammerzell Aasheim ’63, Lakeside Richard Robert Rognas ’63, Lewiston, ID Fred Whitmer, M.Ed. ’63, Woodenville, WA Earl F. Bouse Jr. ’64, Walnut Creek, CA Wendie Ann Wilson Scott ’64, Tucson, AZ Edward A. Stewart ’64, San Francisco Robert A. Bennett ’65, M.S. ’73, Cheyenne, WY Lowell E. Larson ’65, ’70, Federal Way, WA Kenneth Waite Hurt ’66, St. Ignatius Emily Sterba Leighty ’66, Whitefish George C. ”Chuck” Watters ’66, Helena William G. Burns ’67, Guttenberg, IA Archie M. Quarrier ’67, Charlottsville, VA Raymond J. Erickson ’68, Florence Emelia Entzel Huber ’68, Libby Donna Marie Pentz Schmidt ’68, M.A. ’75,

Castlegar, BC

Lloyd Michael Coon ’69, M.B.A. ’77, Malta Patrick M. Springer, J.D. ’69, Kalispell Royal Lysle Paus ’70, Helena Jerry Frank Brumwell ’71, M.Ed. ’77,

Hamilton

Ross William Davidson ’71, Billings Michael Dennis Higgins ’72, Lakeland, MN Len J. LaBuff ’73, Missoula James Donald Schultz, M.Ed. ’73, Glendive Janice Lind Woolston ’73, Billings John Thomas Prothero ’74, Butte Patti L. Usrey Blodgett ’75, Polson George Anthony Caffrey ’76, Columbia Falls Leo P. Joron ’76, Hamilton

William H. Mast Jr. ’76, Missoula Roger D. Page, Ph.D. ’76, Sea Tac, WA Stephen James Sparhawk ’77, Billings Terry Edward Whitright ’77, Browning Lawrence M. Hart ’79, St. Peters, MO Robert P. Holden ’79, M.Ed. ’92, Missoula Gregory A. Stoick ’80, Kalispell Linda Myers Blehm ’82, Billings Ron Roger Hayes, M.A. ’84, Boise, ID Mary M. Leeder Hockel ’82, Bozeman Therese A. Ferkovich Hoss ’82, Oceanside, CA Nancy A. Thibault ’83, Las Vegas Michael John Eve ’85, Whitefish John Florian McCann ’86, ’88, Lake Forest

Park, WA

Brian Russell Kunn ’88, Billings Garnet R. ”Gary” Derby ’89, Missoula Douglas M. Gelvick ’90, Kalispell Dede Hathhorn Eitel ’91, Belgrade Michael L. Nevers, M.F.A. ’93, Costa Mesa, CA Arthur G. Birkhimer Jr. ’95, Kalispell Noah James Ginnings ’08, Missoula Walter D. Coleman, Missoula Betty Ann Daly Conrad, Portland, OR Jerry Cotter, Hurst, TX Bernice Warner Dignan, Great Falls Michael Dennis Elhard, Cut Bank Mary Therese Farrell, Spokane, WA Craig J. Foley, Butte Evelyn McPherson Lindblad Folland, Butte Paul Robert Friedrich, Florence Dale Ross Gyles Jr., Great Falls Russell Charles Hagan, Butte Kennart C. Irgens, Cut Bank Michele Jacobson, Honolulu Irene M. Joshi, Seattle H. Rodney Kempel, Mesa, AZ Eugene Kennedy, Polson Nicia Osness LePiane, Missoula Linda Miller Bennett Llewellyn, Florence Robert Bennett Logan, Helena John L. Magaret, Missoula Ada Grace Neikirk Marchwich, East Helena Timothy John Marron, Billings Jean Allen McGrew, Sammamish, WA Marie M. Borberg Miller, Billings Lynn D. Montgomery, Missoula Gladys R. Hill Naasz, Glasgow Margery Wilding Papich, Albuquerque, NM Loree Dal Porto Payne, Billings Jerry Allen Petersen, Las Vegas K. Maxine Scribner Peterson, Great Falls Justin Michael Pettersen, Missoula Harold Marvi Reddick, Missoula Ardeline Nelson Reuter, Wolf Point Robert George Schipf, Missoula Wally Schwank, Lake Forest, CA Dorothy Benish Stuart, Helena Bertrand Dee Tanner, Mendon, UT Virginia Christiansen Thompson, Belgrade Vince Clark Vargo, Montana City Eleanor Potter Vietor, Philipsburg Walter L. Warren, Hamilton Jerry Winchell, Billings Evelyn Jane Wright, Columbia Falls Montanan spring 2009 |

47

The Enchanted Forest:

P

1916 –

Ball Celebrates Ninety-Second Year

aul Bunyan footprints appear on campus sidewalks.

A kidnapped stuffed moose head named Bertha is held for ransom. A helicopter drops tickets into the Oval. This can only mean it’s time for the annual Foresters’ Ball. For the ninety-second time in UM’s history, the Foresters’ Ball took over campus in February. First held as the Lumberjacks’ Dance in 1916, the Foresters’ Ball continues to be one of UM’s greatest traditions.

Three-hundred couples attended that first dance, and all were admitted free. During the evening, however, six “sheriffs” accosted all the men at gunpoint, demanding a 50 cent fine to cover expenses. This year’s ball sold out with 2,200 tickets snapped up in two days. Couples were charged $25 and singles $15. The chili was still free, and Coca-Cola still went for a kiss.

Now back in Schreiber Gym, the ball has been held in the Field House, now the Adams Center, and downtown at the Union Club. Overriding any changes, however, are its beloved traditions. Every year, forestry students cut and haul in hundreds of fir trees. “Goodnight, Irene” always is the last song. Blue paper snow falls from buckets suspended high above the dance floor. The infamous Black Cat painting hangs in the saloon. Bertha, the foresters’ famous moose mascot, reigns over the partygoers. Students and alumni

Attendees at the thirty-sixth annual Foresters' Ball entered and exited through an oversized tree in 1953.

work “decon” late into Sunday, having already put in a huge week of painting tracks, Convocation, Boondockers Day, the ticket drop, alumni mixer, decorating, chainsaw-board-cutting dedication, and the party itself. Within weeks of the last ball, the new chief push and committee begin planning the next year’s event.

Thanks to John Fidler ’76 and Alyssa Stewart ’10 for their Foresters’ Ball stories, facts, and photos. Can you help the College of Forestry and Conservation build its collection of Foresters’ Ball memorabilia? E-mail jill.kinyon@umontana.edu.

Throughout The Decades

Lumberjacks’ Dance—the first Foresters’ Ball.

1919 – A mountain stream and waterfall run through the bar.

1926 – Footprint “tracks” of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox make their first appearance on campus, signaling the arrival of the ball.

1927 – Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, attends the Ball.

(He returns in 1929.)

1929 – Bertha graces the ball for the first time.

1934 – Guests enter through a branding chute and receive a P.B. (Paul Bunyan) brand on their tickets.

1938 – Missoula radio broadcasts the ball for its listeners.

1941 – The chief push places an outhouse on the lawn of the law building; Bertha is stolen for the first time. The lawyer/logger feud begins.

48 | spring 2009 Montanan

1916 1992 1926 Foresters’ Ball

1967

1941 1954

1944-1945 – No ball held—

the only break in consecutive balls in ninety-two years.

1953 – The tradition of awarding a Schick electric razor to the winner of the Big Beard contest begins.

1954 – Life magazine covers the event. Melting ice from the fir trees warps the gym floor, requiring major repair.

1959 –

An aggressive write-in campaign elects Bertha as UM’s Homecoming Queen.

1963 – Ballgoers cross a mock log pond to enter the event.

1967 – Kathy Davis is chosen as the first Foresters’ Ball queen.

1979 – Bertha is stolen twice— first by the lawyers, then by journalism students.

1982 – Missoulian Smoke Elser, the year’s guest of honor, drives a

pack train of mules and horses around the Oval.

1983 – Tickets cost $12.50 per couple.

1985 – A truckload of palm trees on its way from California breaks down. The chief push, arriving on a surfboard to the dance, falls and breaks a bone. ”Tropical Nights, Loggers Delight“ deemed a bad ball year.

1992 – A three-night event complete with a slide celebrates the ball’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

1996 – A 60-foot Paul Bunyan greets guests at the entrance to the gym.

2007 – Inside decorations include the Only Bar in Dixon, the Berkeley Pit, and Custer’s Last Stand by Your Man Chapel in honor of the year’s theme ”Meet Me In Montana.“ 2009 – The ball is dedicated to Sam Sylvester, a cherished forest management student who died in a tragic accident during summer 2008.

Photo credits: Ball entry, The Sentinel, 1953. Timeline clockwise from top: Students traveling down chute, John Fidler; Kathy Davis, The Sentinel, 1967; woman screaming, Life magazine, vol. 36, March 1954; Bertha, Todd Goodrich; footprint painting, Life magazine, vol. 36, March 1954.

artifacts

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