Signing off from a radio career

For almost 30 years, Archibald was voice of Col. Falls police

JoAnn Archibald just closed out a three-decade career focused on the emergencies of life.

But she didn't let loose of her sense of humor in retirement.

"I'm the oldest living dispatcher," she wryly proclaimed.

It's a play off radio newsman George Ostrom's self-assigned title of "world's oldest living reporter."

The 76-year-old Archibald built up her own fame the last 29 1/2 years on a different sort of radio, as chief dispatcher for the Columbia Falls Police Department.

"It's been a fun trip," she said, reflecting on her career that she wrapped up Dec. 31, 2006. "Twenty-nine-and-a-half years."

That extra "half" at the end of her time prompted plenty of inquiries as to why she didn't hang on for 30.

She just shrugs. She knew when she wanted to hang up the phone.

But it also prompted a retirement pin commemorating 29 1/2 years.

It drew framed congratulatory letters from Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Attorney General Mike McGrath.

And it got her a stylish crystal-look teardrop plaque from the Columbia Falls Police Association marking her years commanding the nerve center of the city's emergency response system.

When she slipped behind the manual typewriter and three phones hanging on the wall at Columbia Falls Police Department on July 1, 1977, she figured it could be a pretty good move.

"I like radio," Archibald said. "I like to talk."

She and her husband, Jack, had worked as a team when he was the fixed-base operator at what became Glacier Park International Airport in the 1970s. They ran Glacier View Skyways there, capitalizing on Jack's experience as a commercial pilot.

She answered the radio in those early days and loved it.

"I can just talk to people," she said.

It was a family affair, with their two children as likely to be outside helping their dad fuel planes as they were to be playing in the yard of their house on airport grounds. Michael Archibald now is a geologist for a global oil company and Donna Jo Burgh works with City University in Bellevue, Wash.

After the airport gig, she handled dispatching duties for the Spotted Bear Ranger District for a season. She packed her bags every Sunday night and drove the 54 miles of rough road from U.S. 2 to the ranger station's cattle guard, then made the return trip on Friday nights.

Fed up with flat tires, she put in her name at the Columbia Falls Police Department just to see if there might be any work.

A week later, she got the call.

Archibald stepped into a sparse operation by today's standards.

A 1980 photo of her in the wood-paneled police station documents her communication system - a black phone for business calls and two red phones, one for Badrock Fire Department and one for Columbia Falls fire, and an old, finger-pounding manual typewriter.

It was a big day when they upgraded to an IBM Selectric. And she continued using card files until 1990, when the first computer showed up on her desk.

"I had to keep a lot of information in my head," she said. "I still know all the phone numbers."

At the end of her career, her son loved to tease her about the Star Wars technology she had at her fingertips, allowing lightning-speed contacts and bottomless memory storage.

But her own memory remained a big draw for officers filling out their reports. They gathered up their paperwork from their own office and plopped down at her table to pick her brain for details as they wrote their reports.

As her retirement neared, though, the chief demanded they use their own resources. No more relying on Archibald. He wanted to toughen them up for when she was gone, she said.

She was named chief dispatcher in 1982, a position she held until her retirement. She got assigned to day shift around 1988 or 1990.

There wasn't much she did not see during that time.

"We had murders, suicides, armed robberies," she said. "I've had it all."

But her most exciting incident stayed right inside the walls of the police station.

Ron Torstensen was the officer on duty one night when a Columbia Falls rookie named Glen Fulton decided it was time for some "quick-draw" practice to get him accustomed to a new holster design.

Working alone in the patrolmen's office, Fulton emptied the chambers of his service revolver, stepped into the doorway to the chief's office, then drew and "fired" over and over at the opposite wall.

Suddenly, Torstensen and Archibald heard a thundering "boom" from the back room. Then dead silence.

When they screwed up the courage to call out to Fulton and walk into the office, they discovered a bullet hole punched neatly through a man on horseback in a Charlie Russell reproduction hanging on the chief's wall.

That bullet accidentally remaining in the sixth chamber was as much a surprise to Fulton as it was to Torstensen and Archibald - who they said chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes in the next hour.

That was worth a good laugh in hindsight. Fulton, now detective sergeant with the Sheriff's Office, still tells the story.

But some heartbreak came with the dispatcher's territory, too.

Archibald will never forget the time when a friend suffered a heart attack and she had to give CPR instructions over the phone to another friend who was by his side at the time. Her friend died despite their best efforts. The loss still sobers her.

Close to 100 police officers came and went during her tenure, she figured.

Archibald's lively scrapbook holds the pictures of the six chiefs of police under whom she served - beginning with Darvin Lundstrom, then 10 years with David Konopatzke, followed by Jim Cox, Dale Stone and Greg Dawson. Her current chief, Dave Perry, now in his 11th year, has stayed the longest in Columbia Falls.

She speaks fondly of them.

"My chief, David, he's responsible for the letters and plaque" presented to her at her retirement party Jan. 27 in the North Valley Eagles club. Sixty people attended the party - dispatchers and officers and city officials and others who have become close friends over the years.

"You end up knowing everyone in the valley that is in law enforcement," she said.

Human emergencies and crimes haven't changed much. She said the domestic-abuse calls, the drunk drivers and other mayhem held steady throughout.

But technology evolved beyond her wildest imaginings - computer screen touch-phones, a single computer mouse that controls several side-by-side screens, a fire and ambulance dispatch that is close to being completely centralized for the entire valley.

Now, she's ready for some R and R.

"Sleeping in is good," she's discovered.

But give her six months, she said, "and then I'll see what I want to do in the summer."

She might do some volunteer work, she said, but probably not until after she and Jack return from their granddaughter's medical school graduation in Washington, D.C. Jack still flies, doing some aerial photography and flight instruction.

Although they moved to a cozy Kalispell apartment a year and a half ago, there's a very special place in her hear for Columbia Falls.

"I never, ever wanted to go someplace else," Archibald said. "I like Columbia Falls. It was the place."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com