Kalispell man's Christmas collection spans 50 years

Duane Enger likes to collect things. Antiques and souvenirs from around the world line the shelves of his Kalispell home. This time of year, though, many of his usual displays are tucked away to make way for a Christmas collection the 87-year-old has assembled over a half century.

Mechanical Christmas toys are Enger’s specialty. He found his first battery-operated Santa Claus in the mid-1960s when he lived in Santa Barbara, California. Since then he’s collected a total of 28 mechanical toys that range from a harmonica-playing penguin to Santa sitting on a souped-up motorcycle. Snowmen, a Christmas mouse and a variety of other characters fill a good portion of Enger’s living room.

“It’s a chore” to set them up every year, he acknowledged good-naturedly. “It takes three hours to put the batteries in.”

For many years it’s been his holiday tradition to gather a few good friends and at the end of the party give a demonstration of the various mechanical creations.

“After a few snacks I turn on the toys and I and friends or family enjoy the various tricks and antics of the toys and get a great amount of entertainment watching this,” he said. “Some play music, others do dances and music at the same time and others sing Christmas tunes.”

Enger’s Christmas collection goes well beyond mechanical toys, however. He’s got a vast collection of glass figurines — angels, nativity scenes and other Christmas memorabilia — arranged throughout his home.

One shelf has a framed collection of gold, frankincense and myrrh he got while working for the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers in Saudi Arabia. In the Christmas story, the three precious commodities were brought by the wise men and presented as gifts to the newborn Jesus.

Enger said he always took the lead in finding the unusual Christmas memorabilia.

“I was the one who did most of the collecting. “I’m an antique man — and I’m an antique, too,” he said with a laugh. “I’m 87 and a half, what I call upper, upper middle age.”

He’s still a child at heart, though, as his eyes light up over the antics of his favorite musical toys.

Christmas has always been a special holiday for Enger, who lived in Minot, North Dakota, until he was 12.

“My grandmother used to put on a big deal,” he recalled. “We had a huge table and it was loaded with goodies. I’d eat so much I got sick.”

The Enger family celebrated their Norwegian heritage with lefse and lutefisk and all kinds of homemade Scandinavian pastries.

Enger attended Flathead High School for a time in the 1940s until he lied about his age and went into the Army at age 16. He later got his high-school diploma equivalence from the state and earned an engineering degree at Montana State University.

His career with the federal government took him all over the country and to some faraway ports as well. Enger did layout and design work for strip mines in Colorado and later worked for the U.S. Forest Service in California, where he was an assistant forest engineer in charge of construction and maintenance.

At one point he worked as a safety engineer for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Billings. Enger was a missile safety engineer at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for a time.

He was employed by the National Park Service in 1978 when the government sent him up the Statue of Liberty — he literally crawled up the statue’s arm and into the torch — to conduct a structural and safety assessment. His 60-page report was part of the impetus for a major reconstruction of Lady Liberty.

He retired from government work in 1988, but continued in the private sector.

Enger helped fix up the Kwajalein Missile Range on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean, then popped over to Kuwait for a short stint before retiring “for good” in 1993.

He and his wife Joan raised four children. Joan passed away in 1992. Not long after her death Enger returned to the Flathead Valley once again, where he met Mary Wyman, his good friend and companion of 22 years. Wyman passed away in May this year.

Enger expects a visit from a granddaughter during December, but Christmas will be quiet for him this year. Chances are he’ll find a little joy in his toys.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.