MY MONTANA

Montana Album: Ashby is “Woman of the Year,” legislative candidate is shot at

GreatFalls

50 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of Oct. 30, 1966:

Norma Ashby, local television personality, was honored by the Great Falls Business and Professional Women’s Club as its “Woman of the Year” at a traditional banquet Tuesday night at Schell’s Restaurant. The youngest woman ever honored by the club, Mrs. Ashby has been hostess of the daily KRTV show, “Today in Montana” since its inception five years ago. The past three years, the show had been cited as the best locally-produced television show in Montana by the Greater Montana Foundation. The award goes only to a top caliber woman with definite goals, who has distinguished herself with outstanding achievement in her career and community.

SEOUL, North Korea – Striking from ambush under a full moon, communist North Koreans wiped out an eight-man patrol of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division below the armistice line Wednesday, just eight hours before President Johnson left South Korea for Washington. The Red raiders killed six American soldiers and a South Korean on duty with them. They wounded the eighth man, an American, in the gravest such incident involving U.S. servicemen in this peninsular nation since the Korean War ended in 1953.

Local Republican leaders have been conferring for the past five days with a man driving a “staff car” of the governor’s office from the state of Alabama, a meeting of Democratic precinct workers was told Tuesday night. Joe Rutan, Cascade County Democratic chairman, speaking to the group, suggested that possibly Gov. George Wallace is sending his personal staff into Montana to lay groundwork with Montana Republicans for entry into the 1968 presidential primary. Rutan wondered if the segregationist Alabama governor may be seeking a running mate for his bid for the presidency and said both Tim Babcock and Wallace have “rejected the idea of a really United States.”

VATICAN CITY – Pope Paul VI, declaring he needs more time to make his decision on birth control, warned anew Saturday that Roman Catholics must still observe Church rules against artificial contraception. He said this showed once more “the enormous complexity and the tremendous gravity of the subject of birth control and requires additional study, and this is the reason we have delayed our answer and will have to put if off still for some time more.”

BUTTE – An announcement by Safeway Stores, Inc., that it will pass on trading stamp savings to its customers was met with guarded optimism Monday. Nancy Evens, spokesman for a women’s boycott organization called Housewives for Lower Prices, said that “although some women dearly love the stamps, many others felt they would much prefer lower prices if the end of the stamps means lower prices.” Safeway, in advertisements carried in Montana newspapers, announced Monday its stores will discontinue giving trading stamps in Montana effective Dec. 31.

NEW YORK – Joe Namath, who has a 10-inch-thick llama rug in his living room and 18-karat gold fixtures in his bathroom, now has the sound of several thousand boos in his ears. The darling of New York’s football fans when he steered the Jets to four straight victories early in the season, Namath suddenly has found himself the victim of both his passes and his publicity. “Yeh, that’s the first time they booed me at home,” Namath said. “Why make so much out of it? My family used to boo men every time I came home. It’s not going to depress me.”

BIG SANDY – Warrant Officer Warren Haakensen, 21, became the first serviceman from Big Sandy to be killed in action in the war in Viet Nam. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Haakensen, were notified the death of their son occurred Oct. 30. According to the letter written them by Maj. Alvin Hauge, Haakensen was flying as a member of the 118th Assault Helicopter Division when he was struck by hostile small arms fire.

HOLLYWOOD – The board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild is asking its 17,000 members for authority to call a strike against advertising agencies and other producers of television commercials. Actor Charlton Heston, guild president, said in a letter mailed to members that the TV advertising business has made “enormous profits” and has refused to grant actors who appear in commercials reasonable increases.

When returns from Saturday’s Electric City Speech Tournament were re-figured Monday, C.M. Russell High School turned out to be the winner, by a margin of four points. The initial compilation Saturday night had indicated a tie with CMR and Great Falls High School holding 64 points each. A clerical error in transcribing the results of one event gave GFHS four points to which the school was not entitled. Announcement of the new figures giving CMR a clear victory came jointly from William Swarthout, GFHS principal, and James Bergene, principal at CMR.

Skeletal remains believed to be those of Joseph H. Westfield, 70-year-old Augusta rancher who disappeared during the 1964 Sun River flood were found Sunday by hunters about two miles from his home. Lewis and Clark County Sheriff David Middlemans announced the remains were found by three youths, Dan And Doug Freeman, 15 and 13 respectively, and Iver Johnson,19. Identity was established by articles of clothing still clinging to the skeleton. Westfield was known to have been wearing a particular kind of cap with earmuffs.

A shingle marquee, red concrete sidewalk and harmonizing red tile display window decking are external signs that Ario’s store has reopened after last June’s fire next door. The store reopened Oct. 11 with entirely new merchandise in the redecorated clothing department, according to owner Art Newman. Ario’s Saddle Shop is doing business at the same location under direction of Earl Haggarty and Orland Oakland, owners. The store’s customers are drawn from places as remote as Hawaii, Alaska and New York.

If the Great Falls Bison should win or tie with Missoula Sentinel Friday, necessitating a playoff game for the Class AA Conference title, the championship contest would be played in Great Falls on Nov. 19. Montana High School Association rules give Great Falls the game because the last time Missoula and Great Falls met in a playoff, the game was held in Missoula. That was in 1946 when the Spartans and Bison finished in a tie for first place in the final conference standings. The championship game was played in Missoula on Thanksgiving Day, and the Spartans took a 13-0 decision for the crown.

100 Years Ago

From the Tribune week of Oct. 30, 1916:

MALTA – Dudley Jones, Republican Candidate for the legislature from Phillips County, was fired upon in his hotel at Dodson early Monday morning, but none of the shots took effect. Reports in Malta are that the shooting was done by a tough gang who attempted to pull off a boxing match at Saco Saturday night which the authorities stopped. They went to Dodson early Monday and attempted to create a rough house at the Pioneer hotel, owned and operated by Jones. The gang is supposed to live in Great Falls.

NEW YORK – Victor Carlstrom, flying in the New York Times’ mail-carrying airplane, failed today in his attempt to fly from Chicago to New York without a stop, but broke the American cross-country non-stop record when he flew from Chicago to Erie, Pa., a distance of 480 miles, in 2571/2 minutes. Carlstrom also broke the speed record for distance flying, his average being 112 miles an hour.

When a Milwaukee electric locomotive crashed into a Black Eagle Park car at the Valeria Way crossing at 27th street at about 6:10 last evening, C.L. Parks, of 3205 Fourth avenue north, received injuries from which he died four hours later, and three others were more or less seriously injured. The accident occurred at the crossing of the Milwaukee railway’s line to its city freight depot and the street car line at Valeria Way. The street car was bound outward, and the locomotive, which was pushing a freight car, was running from the yards to the depot. It is presumed the car in front of the locomotive prevented the headlight from showing, and the freight car caught the trolley, overturning it.

NEW YORK – Because they like fair play and because they believe President Wilson to be a fair player, a score or more of American heroes of the diamond called on the president at Shadow Lawn on “Wilson Day” to inform him that they had organized the Woodrow Wilson Club of Professional Ball Players. “This fellow has been up against it, and we’ve got to stand by him,” declared Ty Cobb today. The membership of the club includes a majority of professional baseball players throughout the country. President Wilson has made himself more popular among the baseball men than any of his predecessors because of his sportsmanlike interest in the game and the fact that all of the clubs that play at Washington are received at the White House.

Never in the history of Great Falls has there been such a demand for dwelling houses as exists at the present time, and never in all that time have as many new residences been erected in any one year as have been built during 1916. The influx of people has created a demand which the existing facilities in rental properties could not supply and which could not be met even by the city’s great building program. Several hundred new dwellings and a score of apartment houses and flats have been put up this year, and still renters are searching for quarters and snapping up every available location despite the facts that rents have advanced to figures which, in many instances, are greatly in excess of the rental value of the apartments.

LOUISVILLE – The Louisville & Nashville railroad late today announced an embargo against the moving of any of its coal car equipment north of Cincinnati. This action was taken, officials of the railroad asserted, because of the failure of lines north of the river to either supply their share of the equipment for the movement of coal going to points in their territory or to return Louisville & Nashville cars. Much of the coal shipped by way of Cincinnati goes to industrial plants of central and northern Ohio.

BOZEMAN – Two thousand astonished spectators saw the light Montana State college eleven play a wonderful fighting game against the heavy State university team on College Field this afternoon in a contest which resulted in a 6-to-6 tie. The wonderful fighting spirit proved the undoing of the famous Missoula football machine which held Syracuse university to a tie score on the Montana field last season. Jolly, the local half back, played a marvelous defensive game as was the star of the game.

DULUTH – Announcement is made today that the domestics — women cooks, waitresses, scrub girls, chambermaids and, in fact, all female servants of the city — are being organized into a union under the standard of the Industrial Workers of the World. A committee of seven I.W.W.s is now out signing up the girls and women for the purpose of calling a mass meeting late next week at which a schedule of wages will be adopted.

With the nip of the cold winds to emphasize the value of the goods, the Indians of the Rocky Boy band and the Little Bear wanderers will be pleased today when they get the shipment of clothing and other supplies sent them yesterday by Theo Gibson. The goods were contributed by Great Falls people during the last few weeks. Gibson said, “Through the courtesy of the Great Northern Express company, the first shipment of clothing, kindly contributed by the Great Falls people, went forward today. There were 21 sacks of very useful cast-off clothes that will be greatly appreciated by the Indians living near Box Elder.

ELKRADER, Iowa – A unique service for an automobile motor has just been called to the attention of the Allen Motor company, in which the engine taken from an Allen car has been used to operate a Ferris wheel for several seasons just past. Practically no change was made in the motor itself to adapt it to this unusual work, excepting that a governor was mounted upon the generator shaft to control the speed.