At 80, Columbia Falls artist is still going strong

Columbia Falls jewelry maker Carol Franco is not slowing down, even though she will be celebrating her 80th birthday with her two daughters next week.

Originally from Los Angeles, Franco moved to Columbia Falls permanently in 2009, after spending several summers working in Glacier National Park, and now calls the area home as she sends her jewelry to be sold as far away as Oklahoma.

Franco said the dream of living near and working in a national park has been with her since grade school.

“My eighth grade English teacher gave us an assignment of writing a letter to a national park regarding employment,” Franco said. “We didn’t mail the letters, of course, but I guess it planted the seed in the back of my mind.”

Franco did not go to work at a national park right out of school, instead she became a stenographer and paralegal for the L.A. County School System. While she spent many years doing secretarial work, Franco said she did not enjoy it. When the opportunity came to make a change, Franco took a chance on an advertisement she saw in her local newspaper.

“I was working as a paralegal, both the girls were grown, and I saw an employment ad in the Orange County (California) Register for a secretary in Sequoia National Park,” she said. “It was a minimum wage job but I took it anyway. As they say, the rest is history.”

Franco said she loved working in Sequoia National Park and, after visiting her sister in Columbia Falls, she fell in love with Glacier National Park and decided to look into working there as well.

After retiring at the age of 69, Franco found herself in a battle with breast cancer. After completing her treatment, she moved permanently to Columbia Falls in 2008 with the help of her daughter Lisa, an accomplished musician. Here, she found her new passion for making Native American inspired jewelry.

While she continues to work in the park – she is a reservationist with the Glacier Park Boat Company – Franco has also been hard at work creating and promoting her jewelry under the names Mountain Lily Treasures and Ruby River Adornments.

With necklaces, earrings and bracelets made using vintage Buffalo Nickels and Indian Head Pennies, gemstones, and hand painted ceramic and metal beads, Franco and her sister, Mary, drove around the Northwest promoting her work to area vendors. Today, her jewelry is on sale in Montana and several surrounding states and as far south as the Wichita Mountain Animal Preserve in Oklahoma.

Franco plans to celebrate her upcoming 80th birthday with her daughters Lisa and Jenny. Lisa will be in Kalispell, performing in concert with her husband, Aryeh Frankfurter, at the Glacier Unitarian Universalist Fellowship May 8 at 7 p.m. Lisa says she scheduled the stop on her current tour just so she could celebrate with her mom on her birthday.

For Franco, she has come a long way since taking that chance on a newspaper help-wanted ad. It was a decision she said she has never regretted.

“It totally changed my life. I never wanted to live in the city again. There are times when I had to, but I loved my time at Sequoia National Park,” she said. “It was a minimum wage job, but it was totally worth it.”