To the lives we have lived, and to the ones ahead. *
Dear Friends:
We hope very much that this season finds you able to salute your past and to anticipate adventures, difficulties, blessings, and routines still to come. At least for us, Don Enrique’s toast rings true. In these past 12 months, the dust in the corners of our house may not have been disturbed, but we witnessed and lived through momentous, sad, joyful, and fascinating passages.
Last winter, Amanda played her last college basketball game and made history at Montana State University Northern as she and her team mates respectfully and creatively engineered the dismissal of an abusive coach. The girls carefully documented his tantrums and threats. After the Montana State Supreme Court ruled in the team’s favor, another player said to Amanda, “I never knew that words could be so powerful.” Amanda’s summer firefighting job with the U. S. Forest Service let her work off a year of tension and put her basketball conditioning to great use on Oregon and Colorado blazes.
Emily and Sergio not only survived their winter’s stay at Dave’s family’s remote property up the North Fork of the Flathead. They thrived! Sergio proposed in the spring and they were married on August 17, a heartbreakingly beautiful day, in front of the full expanse of the Northern Rockies. Sergio’s family and ours had great fun hosting the reception in the North Fork’s log community hall. Never mind that the hall has no running water! Through the summer and fall, Emily and Sergio found a variety of jobs in the area, including work for Glacier National Park.
My father, Paul Sherfy, died on February 24, three months prior to his 90th birthday. I was able to spend 10 days with him earlier that month. His last weeks and passing spurred me to look hard at what matters at work and in life and to treasure the gifts of friendship and caring. Come June, I took a week’s course for activity directors at senior facilities. Come November, I accepted a new job with the Montana Heritage Project. The Project helps Montana high-school students research and fall in love with the history of their communities. It’s a privately funded part of the Montana Historical Society.
As I write, Dave is working on materials for three December presentations of “Christmastime in Montana.” His newest book, More Montana Campfire Tales, just hit bookstores. Through the year, he continued to research and refine his program on the Montana’s World War I Councils of Defense. Those extralegal organizations threatened the lives and civil liberties of anyone judged sympathetic to the Germans and not sufficiently patriotic. Since September 11, 2001, Dave has welcomed the opportunity to give contemporary Montanans a look the price of suspending thoughtful judgment. Before “giving Emily away” this summer, Dave and I attended another reunion of the Civilian Public Service conscientious objectors who manned Glacier National Park during World War II. As Dave gathers new memories, we are heartened immeasurably by the lives of service that these men and their families continue to live.
In the lives we have just lived and those still to come, we find the greatest comfort and joy in Montana’s beauty, a good game on the radio, fresh raspberries, fine new books, the smell of trees becoming earth in the North Fork, and in our laughter, work, and play with you. Thank you!
*Don Enrique’s toast from Harriet Doerr’s “Consider This, Senora.”
