Recalling my friend Stan

A tall handsome young man was in several of my college classes at The University of Montana in 1949 and he had a room in Jumbo Hall near mine. I liked him but also worried about him. Stan was fresh off an isolated ranch on the Crow Agency near Lodge Grass. He was just out of high school, a bit shy and didn’t know hardly anyone at the U.

He didn’t seem to pay close attention to classroom lectures and instead of taking notes he drew pictures of the people in the class, the professors, and whatever else came to his mind. They were well done and I complimented him on an obvious talent, but being an older ex-servicemen, I also took a big brother attitude in explaining he should do more note taking.

Lost track of him, maybe in 1950 or ‘51 and heard he’d gone in the Navy. Life flew by for both of us and then one day while working for Senator Metcalf during the Kennedy Administration, I saw a cartoon strip in the New York Times that was about the folks in an early day western cattle town called “Conniption.” It featured a lawman, Rick O’Shay, and his girlfriend, Gaye Abandon, who worked in a saloon. She had a little boy. There were many other intriguing characters and always someplace in there was a kindly but deadly gunfighter, Hipshot Percussion. The cartoon was by Stan Lynde and unbeknown to me was already spreading to papers across the world where it would eventually end up in over a 100 leading papers and boast an estimated 15 million readers.

One of the first things I did after leaving Washington D.C. was driving to Red Lodge where Stan was living in a big log house above town off the Cooke City Highway. When he came to the door, I asked him if he remembered me. His reply, “How could I ever forget you George? You nagged me more than my mother.” In the wonderful talk that followed, he corrected my pronouncing his name Lynde as Lind. Asked him why he didn’t correct me before at school 15 years before and he said he didn’t think it was that important.

Stan told me about the first time his cartoon came out while he was still in New York after a couple years of almost starving. Said he ran all over Manhattan that night watching the delivery trucks dumping thousands of the papers with his cartoon in them at the newsstands. He said he was on top of the world in … disbelief.

I then asked him where the original of that first cartoon was and he said it was “in that draw” where he pointed. I went to digging and of course found it on the bottom beneath hundreds of others. With his permission I took that wonderful black and white drawing down to a print shop in Red Lodge to see if they could take out a bad crease and remove some soiled spots. They did a wonderful job and it came out looking brand new so I had them make me an exact PMT (photo mechanical transfer) copy which I took back to Stan for his personal signature and gave him the real original in a nice frame.

Stan’s home in Billings was destroyed by fire in 1990 and he called to tell me that original cartoon was among the many precious things he had lost. At his request, I took my copy and made him a new one.

Stan and my friendship was naturally renewed and we had some good times together over many years including some time he lived here in the Flathead.

These memories came rolling back this past week when the word came out that the Montana Historical Society in Helena is featuring a super exhibit entitled, “From the Heart: Stan Lynde’s Comic Creations.” This is to remind Montanans how much Stan loved the western world and its history, then so warmly recorded it during his ingenious life which ended two years ago.

I’ve been thinking of driving over to see the exhibit. Only one things would worry me, “There might be a few tears.”

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.