Jammers 'bitten by Glacier Park bug'

Leroy Lott, a Glacier National Park gearjammer in 1949 and 1950, grins as he recalls a story he told tourists when he stopped his red bus at an overlook for Wild Goose Island and St. Mary Lake.

He explained to them that Wild Goose Island was the official name but the gearjammers still called it Paradise Island.

“It was called Paradise Island by the Indians because no woman ever set foot on it,” he said with a laugh. “I learned that story is still being told.”

Lott, 83, swapped this and more Glacier gearjammer lore at a reunion Sept. 8-10 at Glacier Park Lodge. The event brought together more than 300 former gearjammers and their families to celebrate the park’s centennial and relive their glory days through a jam-packed agenda of speakers, tours and social events.

For Lott and the many who helped him, this second reunion represented the consummation of a decade of seeking and reuniting those who share the life-altering experience of a summer behind the wheel of the iconic red buses of Glacier National Park.

Lott started down the journey on his own.

“I knew a handful of drivers from ’49 and ’50,” he said. “That’s all I had when I started this in 2000.”

The first reunion in 2002 was inspired by the return of the red buses after renovation by the Ford Motor Co. Their slogan,  printed on T-shirts provided by Ford, summed up the drivers’ credo.

“Once a gearjammer, always a gearjammer,” Lott said, reading the slogan off his prized shirt.

Lott, a Texas native, never expected red buses and Glacier Park to make a profound impact on his life when he was a young college student studying business at the University of Texas on a football scholarship. His link to Glacier came from his membership in the Tejas Club, a social organization for university students.

“They had been going to Glacier every year since 1928 to drive the red buses,” he said. “I told them I didn’t want to go — they had to twist both of my arms to get me to come to Montana.”

According to Lott, the park hired Tejas Club members each year because of their reputation as “safe, courteous and entertaining drivers.” He recalled that the park has 35 red buses at that time.

Lott finally relented and agreed to come to what he now considers “a little bit of heaven.”

“I was one of those bitten by the Glacier Park bug,” he said. “Once you’re bitten, you’re affected for life.”

By his second stint in 1950, he was training other drivers while also conducting tours in red bus No. 105. Lott remembers some hair-raising moments in the driver’s seat.

In early summer, he was driving a red bus up the Going-to-the Sun Road just as the crew had cut one way through the Big Drift with just inches to spare on each side. Lott said the snow bank was 70 feet high on one side and 35 feet high on the other.

“Picture this Texan who had rarely seen, much less driven, through snow with an embankment that high,” he said.

His two years driving red buses forged a bond that brought him back for many vacations and more visits when he retired. One was to a Glacier National Park employee reunion around the time the red buses were pulled from service for safety reasons in 1999. 

 Lott was horrified at the possibility they would never return. He and his wife, Billie, got involved with others championing the restoration of the “Reds” and raising money before Ford stepped in to perform $6.5 million in restoration work.

His wife made a painting of  St. Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island, then they sold prints for $100 and donated the money to benefit the buses.

“It wasn’t very much but that was the beginning of the red bus fund,” he said. “If we hadn’t gotten the red buses back, it would have been disastrous.”

Lott calls the red buses and Glacier integral parts of one another, like salt and pepper. The scheduled return of the Reds in 2002 brought a request to Lott to organize a reunion of the unofficial order of Glacier Gearjammers.

“What we wanted to do was show maximum appreciation for Ford Motor Company taking on this massive expenditure,” he said.

It attracted 128 people even with only 10 days’ notice.

Lott said the highlight of that event was introducing his “telephone friends” Bruce Austin, a medical physicist, and Ray Djuff, a Canadian journalist and park historian, to each other.

He credits Austin as one of a handful of people who convinced others that the red buses could be saved. Austin also was the one who convinced him to buy, sight unseen, a 1927 Cadillac once used in private park tours including Franklin D. Roosevelt’s.

As a result of his introduction of Austin to Djuff, the two co-wrote the history of the transportation system in Glacier. Lott sees this coming together as more than a coincidence.

“It was very simply providential,” Lott said.

He also sees heavenly forces at work in bringing him together with well-known Glacier photographer Bret Bouda, who helped raise money for the 2010 Glacier Centennial and Gear Jammer Reunion. At the interview, the two recalled the uncanny series of events linking them even before they met.

Lott contacted Bouda in 2009 after seeing his Centennial Glacier National Park photo collection “Timeless Light.” He wanted to use some photos on the gearjammer reunion website, www.glacierjammers.com.

“A few weeks before I had taken a picture of him,” Bouda said. “When he contacted me, I told him I was working on a red bus book.”

The book, sold locally for $14.90, is called “Jammin’-to-the-Sun: a Tribute to the Red Buses of Glacier National Park.” Lott said it was the ideal book to sell to help raise money for the gearjammer reunion.

Lott’s  jaw dropped when he saw the red bus featured on the cover of the book.

“To my astonishment, he used my number 105,” Lott said. “That’s the one I drove in 1950.”

Bouda next produced four 38 by 14-inch panoramic images on canvas (black-and-white, except for the red buses) to raffle off at the reunion. Three of the four pieces were won by former gearjammers.

According to Bouda and Lott, the 2010 reunion did not disappoint with sessions such as Bill Dakin’s story of Going-to-the-Sun Road, Mike Buck’s history of the red buses and Bouda’s photographs. The book “Jammin-to-the-Sun,” organized around the 10 red bus tours, was a big hit with the gearjammers.

“That was my greatest prize,” Bouda said.

During more than 30 days chasing the red buses for the book, the photographer learned as much about the drivers as the red buses. He said each one studies a huge book of information about Glacier in preparation for the tours.

“It hits me that this is one of the most, if not the most important group of people working in the park,” Bouda said. “These are interpretive tours — they’re teaching, not just driving. It’s incredible what you learn about the park.”

He came away convinced that gearjammers had not received the recognition they deserved for their many years serving in the park and its visitors. Bouda said that was the goal of his book that he sells through his website www.digitalbroadway.com.

“I want people to understand that it’s not just the red buses that are icons,” he said. “It’s the drivers and the history behind them.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.