The toughest news day
What are the odds?
Am too lazy to dig in old files for the exact date, but it was probably early 1980s. Am talking about “the one day” in my long reporting career which rated “the busiest.”
It began early when firemen, police and ambulances came with sirens screaming to the slough on Woodland Avenue near our home in Greenacres. Two small grade-school kids trying a shortcut across the ice had fallen through. The girl was miraculously saved, but a small boy couldn’t be found fast enough in the muddy water. Yes! There were tears.
Was leaving the scene when my scanner revealed the Valley Bank had just been robbed. Hurried to that scene, where a teller standing outside told me the young robber and the cops went westward past the bowling alley.
I was driving up a nearby alley when a patrol car careened in from the opposite direction, and the police chief yelled out the window suggesting “Ostrom” should leave the area, so I put aside my camera and went to the bank. Asked the president, Jack Hensley, “Whose money did that guy get?” With no hesitation he said, “I think it belonged to Art Burch.” We laughed but only a second before the scanner talked of a wrecked tanker truck dumping oil into Stoner Creek at Lakeside.
Back at my newspaper office, top reporter Joanne Speelman was leaving for Lakeside. That left me with Carl Hanson, but minutes later we got a report of a serious Amtrak train wreck in the Middle Fork, with no passengers killed but many shaken up and away from the road, with snow to hinder rescue crews. Called editor Dan Black at Daily Inter Lake, and suggested he might want a reporter-photographer going with Carl Hanson to cover the train wreck, and Joanne could help his paper with the oil spill while we covered robber chase, child drowning and what ever else went wrong.
There were several accidents and more troubles that afternoon, but they paled in comparison to those four biggies. It was a “late night supper day.”
The busiest three days were in September 1976. Rick Hull and I finished setting up that week’s paper after 2 a.m. and headed home. I was just getting undressed when Rick called to say, “George get down here. The Buffalo Building on Main is in flames.”
It may have been the most destructive fire in Kalispell business district history. Big department store and many professional offices gone. Several people were badly injured, including Joanne Speelman and Doug James. My crew had to completely redo The Kalispell Weekly News but made deadline by working rest of night and next day.
Got home late after almost two days without sleep. Getting into bed I told Iris, “Do not wake me up, even if the President calls from D.C.” For some reason I added, “You could wake me if there was a fatal grizzly attack in Glacier Park.”
What are the odds? Just before sunrise, Iris was shaking my shoulders, “George ... George, honey, you will not believe this but ...”
The chief ranger in Glacier, who once served with me in smokejumpers, had helpfully called. There had been a fatal bear attack on three young women sleeping in tents near Many Glacier Ranger Station. Half hour later I was on my way.
That was another long emotional day, but during the next state newspaper convention, The Weekly News received second place award for a “breaking news story” in the tragic grizzly death of Mary Patricia Mahoney.
It did sting a little when first place award went to a guy who had to cover the same story for the Hungry Horse News from his desk in Columbia Falls ... Mel Ruder.
G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.