Ron Bond, longtime community leader, dies at 86
Ron Bond hugs soloist Aleana Sullivan after she gave a great performance during the Columbia Falls Community Choir concert in 2013.
Longtime community leader Ron Bond died May 27. He was 86.
Bond was best known in Columbia Falls for founding and leading the Columbia Falls Community Choir for decades.
His musical history had Montana roots. He grew up in Walkerville, outside of Butte, graduated from Rocky Mountain College and got his master’s in musical education from Colorado State in Greeley.
He then returned to Montana where he taught in Shepherd for a short time before coming to Columbia Falls, where he taught for 22 years in the high school, junior high and elementary schools.
He spent another 12 years at West Glacier before he retired.
Outside of music, Bond was an avid hiker — traveling about 300 miles a year, he said in a 2004 interview. In his later years, he could often be seen walking around town.
He founded the Columbia Falls Community Choir in the mid-1980s, retired from it and then took the helm again in 2004 at the age of 67. He directed the choir for more than 10 years after that.
The choir started out with about 37 people, he recalled. By 2004 it had nearly 100 members.
“The choir is for the people,” he said.
The choir featured popular jazz tunes, arias and gospel under Bond’s direction and he had a knack for getting the most out of people, even those singers who couldn’t read music.
Bond was also a gifted athlete and was a starting college pitcher in college. He was enshrined into the Rocky Mountain College Baseball Hall of Fame and as an adult coached many local youth baseball teams, including the Glacier Twins.
A celebration of life will begin at 2 p.m. at St. Richards Catholic Church on Saturday, June 3.