Anderson closes out education career

Bill Anderson recommends that anyone interested in education start their careers in a place like Westby.

That’s where Anderson began teaching, hired without even an interview. He’d submitted a letter applying for a position, and received a job offer in reply.

When he and his wife, Karen, arrived in the tiny Northeast Montana town, they hit the ground running.

Football practice starts tomorrow, the superintendent told Anderson, the new coach. Your first game is in two weeks. And oh, by the way, you’re also going to be driving the bus.

Anderson and his wife worked in the lunchroom of the K-12 school. Karen Anderson washed towels and sewed football uniforms. They also had their own classrooms — she with the fourth-graders and he teaching upper elementary and high school students.

Now, four schools and 47 years later, Anderson is retiring. On Wednesday he wraps up a nearly five-decade-long career, most recently as Columbia Falls Junior High School’s assistant principal.

“Forty-seven years of service to students, parents and education — that’s quite an accomplishment,” junior high principal Dave Wick said. “We can’t express how much appreciation we have for what he’s done.”

Anderson has given nearly half a century to education, but the thought of leaving still brings tears to his eyes.

“It’s kind of hard to give it up,” he said. “There comes a time ... I think maybe you want to do something different.

“But they’re going to have to pry me out of here with a pry bar, probably.”

Anderson followed his wife, who is likewise retiring this year after 30 years in education, into teaching.

They’d dated when both were students at Polson High School. They kept in touch after Anderson graduated and headed for the University of Montana. Karen, who was younger, went to Western Montana College, now UM-Western, and started teaching in Missoula.

When he graduated with his teaching degree, Anderson went into the Army. After his two years were up, Anderson and his wife moved to Westby.

The tiny town — today the population is not quite 150 — is “as far northeast as you can get” in Montana, Anderson said. He used to joke that if his kicker put the ball through the uprights, they had to go to North Dakota to pick it up.

There were 180 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, Anderson said. In a school that small, everyone did a little bit of everything, but Anderson made a point of getting to know the “unseen” people who helped keep the school running: the custodian and the hot lunch cooks.

Those are “the people that keep the wheels greased,” Anderson said. “They’re the key people.”

After three years in Westby, the Andersons moved a little farther west to Scobey. They spent two years there before jumping at the chance to move back to Western Montana. Anderson took a job teaching and coaching in Libby.

It was the late ’60s, an exciting time to be in Libby. It was the early years of the dam, Anderson recalled, and people who weren’t moving there to work on Lake Koocanusa were busy in the timber and mining industries.

There were 2,600 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and 800 at Libby High School, where Anderson taught history and psychology. The school was large enough that it moved to the Class AA division, pitting the Libby Loggers against the state’s big schools.

Anderson coached football, track and field and assisted in basketball. The road trips were long; a trip to Butte meant leaving Libby at 6 a.m. and returning around 2 or 3 a.m. the next day.

But the distance worked to the Loggers’ advantage during home games.

“Other kids didn’t want to come to Libby,” Anderson said.

The Andersons spent 15 years in Libby. During that time, the three oldest Anderson girls, Pam, Tricia and Lynn, graduated from Libby High. They competed in basketball, track, golf and tennis, Anderson said, during a time when girls’ sports were just beginning.

Anderson didn’t always get a chance to get see his daughters compete. He was busy coaching boys’ teams and also had what amounted to a second career with the military.

Some days, Anderson spent all day in the classroom, all afternoon in the gym or on the field and then drove to Kalispell for Guard and Reserve meetings. He was also president of the Lions Club, active in the Elks Lodge and taught classes for Flathead Valley Community College.

“I was just so busy,” Anderson said. “My kids would see me leave home in a tie and shirt and come home in fatigues.”

After 15 fast but pleasant years in Libby, an assistant principal job opened at Columbia Falls High School. Despite his hectic schedule, Anderson had still found time to get his administration certificate, and he applied.

He wonders, only half-jokingly, if the Libby principal was glad to see him go.

Anderson was known for teaching kids to rappel off the football stadium’s score building and had once arranged for a helicopter to land on the playground. The latter had involved a student signaling the chopper with a green smoke grenade — a word that had made the principal very nervous.

Anderson spent six years as Columbia Falls’ assistant principal and activities director, then another eight as principal. In 1996, he accepted a position as assistant principal and activities director at Columbia Falls Junior High, a job he has held ever since.

“Teaching is an area where you can work a long time if you like it,” Anderson said. “And I have liked every day of it.”

Now that they’re retiring, Anderson and his wife, who has been a teacher at Deer Park Elementary, plan to spend time with their four daughters (Jill went through the Deer Park and Columbia Falls school systems) and nine grandchildren.

Even though Anderson is eager to spend time with them, there’s another family he will miss terribly.

“My colleagues are very special people,” he said. In teaching, “you have a second family, you might say. It nurtures you.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.