Longtime Sheriff's Posse member remembers group's early days

The Flathead County Sheriff’s Posse has been around in some form for 65 years, and for all but the first nine of those years it has counted Loyal Chubb among its members.

Now 74, Chubb reminisced about his younger days and how the posse has changed as he worked a midnight to 8 a.m. shift last week at the Northwest Montana Fair.

The posse helps to supplement the efforts of the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office by providing traffic and crowd control, providing security at sporting events and other special events, preserving and securing crime scenes and evidence, assisting in search-and-rescue efforts and providing other assistance.

Chubb joined the posse in 1956 at the urging of his friend Chuck Yost, with whom he worked at the Columbia Falls aluminum plant after they graduated from high school. At the time, Chubb said, it was almost a requirement to own a horse. There were roughly 35 members of the posse, and of those, about 30 had a horse.

Chubb himself had always been a horseman, growing up on a farm in the Flathead Valley.

“It sounded like something that I would enjoy, especially with the horse,” Chubb said. “I’ve had a horse just about all my life except the last three years.”

In fact, much of the work of the posse was focused on horsemanship during the group’s early years. Drill master John Taylor trained members rigorously, leading to performances at fairs and shows in Kalispell, Helena and Great Falls. The posse even made an appearance at the Calgary Stampede, a yearly rodeo, exhibition and festival held in Calgary, Alberta, that now draws more than one million visitors.

“He was strict with us, and he wanted us to perform the way he wanted us to perform. That’s why he was strict, which was good,” Chubb said. “It was rewarding just to be part of it.”

IN THOSE EARLY DAYS of the posse, horses were a preferred mode of travel as well as a work tool, particularly in search-and-rescue efforts.

“Back then they didn’t have the snowcats, they didn’t have the motor bikes, they didn’t have four-wheelers and all that stuff to do that with, and that’s why they used the horses to do that,” Chubb said. “Now, even with some of those things, like looking in the Bob Marshall, they might [be able to search] with a bike sometimes on a trail, but horses can go pretty much anywhere except really steep country.”

As technology changed over the years, however, horses became less and less a part of the posse’s work. Chubb noted that in the late 1970s and ’80s, horses disappeared entirely from the posse program. But they are now making a resurgence, which Chubb sees as a positive development.

“Today, they use them to help police parades and so forth, and it just saves us the walking,” he said.

Chubb mentioned one instance in which posse members were providing security at a parade, keeping adults and children from running out in front where they could get hurt.

He said an inebriated man with a beer in his hand kept wandering out into the road and was standing about six feet farther out than everyone else. After he didn’t respond to verbal warnings to get back, a mounted posse member rode up alongside him and sidestepped his horse, pushing the man back. Unable to keep his balance, he fell down, giving everyone who witnessed the incident a laugh.

ALONG WITH HIS WORK on the posse, Chubb had a nearly equally lengthy employment with Columbia Falls Aluminum Co., retiring in 2004 after 48 years there.

That career was nearly ended roughly four or five years after he started when he caught his right hand in a buzz saw, carving across the knuckles below all four fingers and his thumb as well as down one of his fingers as he pulled his hand away.

Chubb told his doctor, who had been skiing on Big Mountain when he was called back for the emergency, to just sew his hand back together. The doctor was able to draw the main tendon of Chubb’s thumb back together where it had been severed and reconnect it.

“The plant, in order to take me back to work even, they made me climb a rope,” he said. “They had a one-inch rope there; they made me climb that rope to prove that I could use the hand that well. But it was quite a little process before I did heal up to where I could do that.”

Through the years Chubb has enjoyed working on his land. It’s a pastime he still enjoys.

He bought his first 40 acres when he was just a junior in high school, and bought another 40 acres when he graduated. The two tracts were not connected, however, so before Chubb turned 21 he bought another 160 acres that joined them. After inheriting yet another 40 acres and buying 160 more, he came to his current total of 400 acres.

Of that land, however, he has turned over 140 acres to his children.

Chubb has four daughters, two of which live on that land. One daughter lives in the Columbia Falls area and another lives in Homer, Alaska. His extended family includes 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

He lives with his wife, Sharon. She’s also a posse member, having joined three years ago.

CHUBB IS HAPPY with his career and his work with the posse, and don’t expect to see him giving up working any time soon. He said he has to be doing something to keep busy, whether that’s cutting firewood, clearing brush or working with the posse, a singular point of pride in his life.

“I’m proud to be able to belong to an organization that’s serving the public and trying to help people,” Chubb said.

He didn’t mince words when asked what it would take for him to finally leave the posse.

“Breaking my back, I suppose,” Chubb said.

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.