December 2010/January 2011 Vol 27 No 2
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Marge Eliason Has Lived A Life of Compassion for Others
Marge Eliason has not just lived in Billings for 56 years, she has helped create some of the important programs in the community, and she continues to enrich her hometown through a variety of current activities. [Photo by Michael Gilluly]
By Sue Hart Marge Eliason did not have the easiest or most comfortable time in her growing-up years, which may explain her lifelong passion for improving the lot of other children and their parents. During the Depression, many families struggled to stay fed and housed, and the Eliason family, mother, father, and one-year-old Marge, was no exception. “We were living in a Glacier Park campground.” she says. “Then Dave Yegen (of the Billings Yegens) offered my father a job managing a pool hall Yegen owned in Browning. There was a two room apartment above the pool hall, and that was our home for several years.” It was not the quietest or most ideal of homes for a young girl. “The poker and other card games would go on until two or three in the morning,” she recalls, and her “playground” was often limited to the staircase between the first and second floors of the establishment. Eventually, Yegen asked Marge’s father to manage his ten-unit motel, also in Browning, which included a house/motel office. “For the first time, I had a bedroom of my own, “she recalls. “I was nine years old.” Attending high school in Browning brought a new set of challenges into her life. “Some of the other girls were really mean,” she says. “They’d punch and kick me.” And then, in her sophomore year, she started “running with the wild kids,” a choice that caused her parents to transfer her to Holy Names Academy in Spokane. She was thirteen when he left Browning. “My parents put me on the train, and I was met in Spokane by two nuns,” she says. “One of them gave me a nickel and told me to call for a taxi. I’d never seen a pay phone before!” After high school, she enrolled at St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul, Minn. With her characteristic good humor, she remarks, “Those two years probably saved my life. If I hadn’t have been there, I probably would have followed the first yahoo who came down the street.” Instead, she graduated with a two-year certificate to teach kindergarten classes, and went on to the then Montana State University in Missoula (now U of M) and received a degree in Health and Physical Education in 1951, one of a record-setting graduating class of 400. (Missoula had no (Continued on page 25)