Walking for a cause - and exercise

Leo Renfrow has a pretty simple reason for wanting to join this year's CROP Hunger Walk in Columbia Falls next month.

"It's just something I wanted to do," he said in a recent interview. "I just want to keep in shape is all."

Renfrow is 90 and lives at Beehive Homes Assisted Living Center.

The CROP walk is a fundraiser organized locally by Our Savior's Lutheran Church and the United Methodist Church in Columbia Falls to combat hunger both locally and internationally. CROP stands for Christian Rural Overseas Program.

Last year, the effort raised several hundred dollars, a portion of which benefited the Columbia Falls Food bank while the rest went toward international hunger-relief programs..

Renfrow was the first person to sign up for the walk, scheduled for Oct. 9 on the streets of Columbia Falls.

Renfrow likes to walk. Every day, three times a day, he walks the track at the junior high. He grew up on a farm in Iowa and moved to Columbia Falls in 1954. A Navy veteran of World War II, he served on the USS Pennsylvania. When he left the service, his mother's brother lived in Missoula and urged him to visit. So he did.

"He always told us, ‘When you grow up, come to Montana,'" Renfrow recalled.

Renfrow is well known locally for his house building and cabinet work. He began his woodworking career at a cabinet shop in Coeur d'Alene, built a house there, sold it and moved to Montana.

In Columbia Falls, he started his own cabinet shop, which operates under different owners today, and he built many houses. Several homes in the South Nucleus Avenue neighborhood were built by Renfrow.

He also enjoyed climbing the mountains and hiking the hills in Glacier National Park and the Mission Range. An avid hunter, he even bagged a mountain lion without use of hounds. He was building a church lodge in Lincoln, and when he got spare time, he'd go out hunting. One day, he saw the lion and shot it.

Today Renfrow's life is far less adventurous. He sits on a bench at the junior high track and takes a break.

"I like to sit down and look things over," he said.

To join Renfrow and this year's CROP Walk, contact Nancy Flint at 892-4532 or Ed Folkwein at 892-9593.