Historical Society leader loves a good story

Walter Sayre knows a lot about local history, but it's not facts and figures that drive his research, it's the offbeat stories.

"Dates are important, but they're not interesting," the Whitefish historian says matter-of-factly. "What I look for is the anecdotal stuff, the odd things."

And he's found plenty of good stories during the many years he's pored over miles of microfilm for his "Looking Back" column in the Whitefish Pilot.

He's got his favorites, like the $3 tax on bachelors enacted by the state Legislature in the early part of the 20th century. Sayre also relishes in telling about the "crazy man's castle" near Bitterroot Lake, a bizarre concoction of cupolas, turrets and walls built at odd angles from Great Northern Railway scrap timber. It was never finished and eventually burned down.

As president of Stumptown Historical Society, Sayre, 68, has an insatiable appetite for history, and Whitefish's centennial this year has given him plenty to feed off of. He dressed in an old sheriff's uniform for the centennial kickoff last month, when a 1915 time capsule pulled from the Masonic Temple cornerstone revealed a box full of moldy documents.

Coincidentally, Sayre had researched the time capsule and included an itemized list of the contents in his book, "Looking Back: Whimsical Whitefish Through the Years."

He's still hoping to salvage the non-paper items in the copper box, such as several period coins and a Masonic silver pocket piece.

Like other historical society members, Sayre helps staff the organization's museum in the Whitefish train depot.

"I like talking to people from Australia and England," he said. "They have a different sense of humor and a different way of seeing things."

He appreciates a good sense of humor and is known himself for quick wit.

"I got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel," he retorts when asked how he's doing.

Rheumatoid arthritis came on in the fall of 1986, the same year Sayre retired.

"I got these funny little pains," he recalled. "It came on so fast I didn't get too much deformity. They said to prepare for being in a wheelchair."

Sayre has proven the doctors' prediction wrong so far and walks with the aid of a cane.

In his heyday, Sayre was a standout basketball player. He stood 6 feet 6 inches tall, depending on the day.

"I was anywhere from 6-2 to 6-10, depending on who they wanted to scare," he said with a laugh.

Times have changed drastically in the sports arena, he noted.

"One time I dunked the ball [during practice] and the coach made me sit out a quarter. He didn't want showoffs," he recalled.

High-school basketball season came with its perks, though.

"The only time I could get a date was during basketball season," Sayre said. "The rest of the time I was a typical nerd."

Sayre, born in 1937, spent the first 12 years in Mancos, Colo., then moved with his family to Durango, where he graduated from high school in 1957.

"I was very lucky to be raised in small towns," he said. "What would get you thrown in jail now was a little mischief back then. I wasn't exactly an angel, but I didn't get into a lot of mischief."

He enlisted in the Navy in between World War II and the Korean War and served as an aide to a four-star general in Naples, Italy, for two years.

After the service, he put his love of books to work, literally, as manager of a large book store in Farmington, N.M. Two years later, in 1965, he hired on with Frontier Airlines as a station agent.

"I was a jack-of-all-trades. We did everything but fly the planes," he said. "In 1977 I heard of an opening in a place called Kalispell. I had to look it up on the map. I thought if I was going to get anywhere with the company I better take the job. I transferred here sight unseen."

It didn't take Sayre and his wife, Anna, long to discover in Whitefish.

"I checked out Whitefish and thought I'd died and gone to heaven," he remembered.

The couple have lived in the resort town ever since.

Incidentally, his wife is from Mancos, too, but he didn't meet her until he got out of the Navy. They have one son, Roger, who also serves in the Navy.

Sayre's passion for books surfaces in many ways. Roughly 29 six-foot bookcases at his home house a collection of 6,000 hard-back volumes, the majority of them history books. He's a Civil War and World War II buff and has books written about the Civil War at the time it was under way.

As usual, it's the personal stories that have intrigued him.

"I came across a diary that covered an entire year of a Union soldier," he said. "He started each entry with a weather report."

Though Sayre's rheumatoid arthritis prevents him from walking the long distances he once trekked in places such as Glacier Park, he's still able to get around some in the park.

"We saw a fox at Bowman Lake last Sunday," he said.

A tireless promoter of local history, Sayre spends time with high school students involved in the Montana Heritage Project and helped the late Frank Gregg set up a photo filing system for the Stumptown museum.

He spends up to six hours a day on his volunteer history work, maybe a little more these days, since it's Whitefish's centennial.

"I'm not used to being in the limelight," he said, paging through his book to find more of his favorite historical tidbits. "Did you know they actually once considered building a subway in Whitefish?"

Once again, he's the consummate storyteller.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com