Preserving the past for the future

The Save Old Main Association gets an A+ for effort. After more than 10 years of working and waiting, pushing and pleading, the first phase of restoration began this week on the 108-year-old Old Main building on the Montana Veterans Home campus in Columbia Falls.

The grand old building is getting a new roof, a vital component of preserving the brick structure until a full renovation can be done.

It would have been easy to abandon the project after a few years, but a few persistent association members kept going, carried along by the dream of a now-frail Navy nurse, Mary Felder, who still resides at the veterans home and spearheaded the original restoration project. Buildings such as Old Main are anchors to the past and need to be preserved, she insisted.

We haven't heard the last from Save Old Main Association. It will be pushing on with fund-raising to renovate the entire building, so that one day it will be used once more for veterans, either as a medical clinic or military museum.

For our veterans' sake, it's a project worth supporting.

A retired teacher, an office manager, a mother of five - these were just three of the two dozen people who are taking a big step to help out Red Cross disaster-relief efforts.

They stepped up to go through training for disaster services, with an eye on helping out in the hurricane-hit Gulf Coast.

These volunteers are making a laudable commitment to what could be a very difficult duty: giving up their lives for three weeks to spend 24 hours a day in shelters with evacuees. There will be long, hard hours of work, substantial health risks and many physical and emotional challenges.

The spirit of these valiant volunteers was best captured by one trainee: "No matter where it is, it is still our community."

A century of religious and community activity is being celebrated this weekend at Whitefish United Methodist Church.

The church was officially begun in 1905 on Spokane Avenue; today it occupies a new facility on Wisconsin Avenue.

And the congregation has a positive outlook as the church enters its second century. Although a few years ago the church had a dwindling congregation of around 60 meeting in a former medical clinic, now it has a thriving group of around 300 people.

Faith in the future helped the church rebound and end its first century in style.