A life well-lived despite hard work and hard times

By the time Grace Larson was 25, she had five children, had been divorced twice and was on her way to filing for a third.

In those early years while caring for her family, she worked such diverse jobs as day-care provider, log skidder and journeyman painter.

Larson shares the hardships she endured, mistakes made and blessings she’s been given in her self-published book “Grace,” the most recent of six books she has published in the last five years.

Born in Hot Springs in 1940, Larson’s childhood was both traumatic and joy-filled. She recalls her mother having to mix flour and water to make pancakes to feed her family. Her home on the Flathead Reservation near Big Arm had no running water, was uninsulated, heated by a woodstove and lit by a single Coleman lantern. Her parents divorced when she was a baby; her mother remarried soon after, only to divorce her second husband and remarry again.

Larson considers herself fortunate, however, to have spent most of her childhood with her beloved grandparents on their 2,000-head sheep and horse ranch 8 miles from Lonepine.

On that ranch owned and operated by Dan Poloson (who in 1916 immigrated at age 20 from Romania) and Mae Poloson (who in 1910 traveled at age 21 from Arkansas to homestead in Three Forks, Montana) Larson learned at an early age how to put up hay, operate a tractor, herd livestock and train horses. She rode bareback every day throughout her youth.

“Riding bareback across the hills at a full gallop on my horse Silvertip-Rickey will always be my favorite childhood memory,” Larson fondly recalls.

As a teen, she would ride her horse from Hot Springs 8 miles over Irvin Flats hill to Polson to go to the library or the movies, then ride back home after dark.

THROUGHOUT HER life Larson struggled with her relationship with her mother. Her stepfathers were drinkers; the first deserted the family when she was 8 years old, which led to her longtime fear of abandonment.

She finished high school by way of a correspondence course and married in 1957 at age 16. The young couple moved to the Twin Cities where Grace always found odd jobs while raising four children born in six years. Though married to an alcoholic with a poor employment record, Larson was determined to give her children a decent life, even though she was struggling with her own co-dependency issues.

After divorcing her first husband, she quickly remarried to a man willing to take on her four children. During these years, Larson worked long hours wherever she could until she was able to purchase a day care, overseeing three employees, five babies and 15 children. She also gave birth to her fifth child.

This marriage also ended in divorce, only to have her childhood abandonment issues propel her into a third, equally poor, marriage.

LARSON’S LIFE has been one of hard physical labor, grit and determination. Nearly 6 feet tall, she could handle what in those days was strictly men’s work — ranching, logging, commercial painting.

In 1974, she was hired by a paint contractor out of Butte, becoming the first woman hired in the trades as maintenance painter for the Anaconda Company. It was her first well-paying job where she would be working for someone else and with a crew of all men.

“I was very nervous that I wouldn’t be able to do the work,” she said. “But I lived by Eleanor Roosevelt words, ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’”

Larson later was hired as inmate paint crew supervisor at the Deer Lodge Prison where she supervised 11 inmates. Her book “The Making of a Con” was written about a man on her crew.

In 1981, after suffering a serious neck injury and leaving her third husband, Larson enrolled in the Chemical Dependency Counselor Training Program at Spokane Falls Community College. For the first time in her life she gained the confidence to believe wholly in herself.

“Graduating from Spokane Falls College with honors was the proudest moment in life,” she said.

IT WAS at this time she met and married the true love of her life, Lyle Larson, a Navy Seabee veteran whom she’d first met 25 years ago, a friend of her first husband. They moved to Colstrip and later Forsyth where Larson worked as a chemical dependency counselor and started a number of successful Adult Children of Alcoholics groups.

She and Lyle enjoyed many happy years of marriage and retirement. Lyle died in 2013, the morning after their 32nd anniversary. Larson wrote her book “Once in a Lifetime Comes a Man” in his memory.

She sold their home the following year and moved to Kalispell to finish writing “An Immigrant, A Homesteader, and Sheep.” Published in 2014 and filled with historic family photos, the book chronicles the Poloson family’s history through the words of her mother, uncle and aunt. Through their recollections, Larson captures both the history and the essence of ranching in the small communities of Lonepine, Niarada and Hot Springs.

“All my blessings could fill a big book,” Larson said. “Life itself is a blessing.”

Her book “Fay” records the life and championship rodeo career of her aunt, Fay Poloson Haynes, inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2010.

Larson’s children’s book “Bum Lambs” is about her childhood experiences raising lambs rejected by their mothers.

Written sparingly and honestly, Larson’s books convey the hardships and values of ranch life, hard work and her determination to live a good life.

Larson’s new book, “Montana Hangings,” will be out later this spring. She’s also hoping to write about Montana Territory businessman Granville Stuart, and she recently interviewed a 90-year-old woman and is writing her biography. Larson also volunteers locally with the senior assistance program, My Glacier Village.

At age 80, she’s staying true to the advice her Aunt Fay gave her after Larson’s daughter died, “Grace, you’ve got to stay busy.”

Grace Larson’s books can be purchased on Amazon or on her website montanagracelarson.com

Community Editor Carol Marino may be reached at 758-4440 or community@dailyinterlake.com