Martha Sloan, noted Glacier Park secretary, dies at 91

Martha Sloan, a longtime Glacier National Park secretary, died Thursday (Oct. 6). She was 91.

Sloan was born in June 1925 and her parents, Martha (Cook) Sloan and John B. Sloan homesteaded a mile west of West Glacier. She began her career at Glacier at the age of 18, as the clerk-typist for Park administrative officer Fred Bussey. She worked at the Park for 47 years, most of it as an executive secretary in the ranger division.

Sloan didn’t just work at Park headquarters, though. She embraced the landscape.

In a 1999 Hungry Horse News interview, Sloan pined for a different sort of job in Glacier, one that had four very different job descriptions.

“If there were such a job it would have to be pushing the clouds around, serve as custodian of Lake Janet, Elizabeth, Sue Lake, Gunsight Lake, Middle Two Medicine Lake, etc. watch the many flowers bloom and breathe some of the freshest air on the continent,” she said.

Sloan’s tenure in Glacier spanned nine different superintendents. She was there when the was designated an International Biosphere Reserve in 1974 and a World Heritage Site in 1996.

While those were interesting accomplishments, Sloan said those weren’t the things that truly enchanted her.

“If I had to pick a favorite part of Glacier Park, it would have to be the top of Boulder Pass,” she said. “There you get awesome views of the Rockies in both the United States and Canada. It’s like being in another world where you can hear only the wind and the other sounds of this majestic natural masterpiece.”

David Mihalic was a superintendent at Glacier Park in the late 1990s and has fond memories of Sloan.

“I first met Martha when I was the ranger ‘at the head of the lake’ – Lake McDonald Ranger Station for two summers, 1972 and 1973. Martha was the ranger’s secretary and she was on a high pedestal. She was respected and held in high esteem by all the permanent rangers. But she had time for everyone in a flat hat, even a lowly seasonal like me. She even remembered me when I returned in 1994. Martha had a ‘rogue’s gallery’ of pictures of the best rangers in the Park on her wall in her office. Everyone aspired to get on that wall but only a few made it – and I certainly never did having gone over to ‘management!’ I had great respect for Martha and saw her and her sister in church every week when we lived in Columbia Falls. I’m sorry to hear of her passing. She was the epitome of a ‘Grand Lady’ and Glacier and its future rangers will never know what they are missing. And, I’ll miss her smile,” he said in an email to the Hungry Horse News, as he was traveling in Croatia.

Rosary for Sloan will be 7 p.m. Friday, Oct 14 at St. Richard’s Catholic Church in Columbia Falls. Funeral service at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, also at St. Richard’s.