Radio personality George Ostrom dies

G. George Ostrom, the voice of the Flathead Valley for more than 60 years, died Jan. 1. He was 96.  

“George was the local voice. No one could match what he did on the air and people loved it,” said KGEZ Kalispell owner John Hendricks. Hendricks hired Ostrom after he left following years at KOFI radio. 

Ostrom was a radio personality, newspaper owner, author, longtime newspaper columnist for the Hungry Horse News, avid hiker and humorist.  

Hendricks credited Ostrom for literally saving the station, when Hendricks purchased it in February 2011. Hendricks learned that Ostrom, who was in his 80s at the time, was available, so he offered Ostrom a job. 

At first, he said, Ostrom was hesitant. A great newsman, Ostrom didn’t like computers. 

“Don’t worry about computers,” Hendricks told him. 

A few hours after their initial discussion Ostrom called back and took the job.
“It was a such a pleasure to work with him,” Hendricks recalled. “We might not be here today if it hadn’t been for George.” 

Ostrom celebrated his 90th birthday with the station. He retired in 2017.   

In 2004 he was inducted into the Montana Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. 

A longtime Hungry Horse News columnist and source, Ostrom’s columns about his adventures in Glacier National Park with the Over-the-Hill Gang (a group of hikers that venture into Glacier every Thursday) were fabulously received. 

“People often thought George owned the newspaper,” Hungry Horse News Editor Chris Peterson said. “He didn’t. But that just shows the influence he had on readers. He was a living legend, a friend, a source and incredibly funny. He was an integral part of the Hungry Horse News for decades.” 

Ostrom was born July 24, 1928, in Missoula, the first of four children born to Logan and Hazel Ostrom.

He grew up at the Flathead mine north of Kila where his father mined for silver for the Anaconda Mining Co. Ostrom went to Flathead High School. World War II was on and Ostrom lied about his age, going to work for the Forest Service in his teens, maintaining the telephone lines from Hungry Horse to Spotted Bear, he said, in a 2016 interview. 

“Loggers were felling trees on the line every day,” he recalled. He said he’d complain, and they’d reply, “Ostrom, without us, you wouldn’t have a job.” 

He quit high school when he was 17 and joined the Army in 1945. He was shipped overseas but World War II had just ended. He worked in a top secret signal center in Frankfurt, Germany in the I.G. Farben building and was discharged when he was 20. 

Returning to Montana, he attended the University of Montana, but he didn’t do well in class and never graduated. 

“I was a lousy student,” he said in the 2016 interview. “They called me kissing George.” 

Even so, he served 20 years on the university’s president advisory council and received a distinguished alumni award. 

He was also a Forest Service smokejumper for five years and was an instructor in parachuting and smokejumping.  

He was down on his luck, living with his parents, when a small radio station started up in Kalispell, the 10,000-watt KOFI Radio. Ostrom was in debt and needed work but was told there weren’t any openings. 

“You’d have an opening if you’d fire that announcer,” Ostrom told them at the time. He knew he could do better than the guy they had working in the booth. 

So, they gave Ostrom a chance. They recorded him, liked what they heard and sure enough, fired the other announcer. 

THAT SAME year he met his “first wife” Iris. (In his columns, that’s how she was lovingly referred to.) It was a blind date — the two went to a political rally for then Sen. Mike Mansfield. 

They were married on April 12, 1958. 

“She straightened me out,” Ostrom said in 2016. “I was a wild S.O.B.” 

After helping the upstart KOFI radio station develop into a successful news source, George bought the Kalispell Weekly News in 1974 and built it into the largest weekly in Montana with a circulation of over 12,000.  

He later purchased KOFI with partners and began delivering his legendary brand of news reports and commentary — “Let's see what the dingbats, wingnuts and evildoers were up to last night” and “Drive carefully, wear your seatbelt, and be kind to one another.” 

He would later sell his stake in the station.  

Ostrom held other jobs, but he always kept in touch with radio. He was a loan officer for a time at what is now Glacier Bank, but his primary job was helping Owen Sowerwine promote and start up Flathead Valley Community College in the mid-1960s. 

From 1961 to 1962 he worked in Sen. Lee Metcalf’s office on the Wilderness Act and attended George Washington University Law School.  

After a letter he wrote Hungry Horse News editor Mel Ruder was so well received, Ostrom began writing a regular column from Washington, D.C. The first one appeared on July 13, 1962. Ostrom returned home, but continued the column, which ran until he purchased the Kalispell Weekly News.  

After he sold the newspaper in 1982, he began writing for the Hungry Horse News again. His column ran until the late 2010s.  

ONE OF the biggest stories of his career was the fatal mauling of two people in Glacier National Park in 1967 by separate grizzly bears — one at Granite Park and the other at Trout Lake. The next day Ostrom went to Granite, as Park rangers were patrolling the area and shooting suspected grizzlies. 

“They told me, ‘You can’t go up there,’” he recalled in 2016. “I told them, ‘You can’t stop me.’” 

And up the trail he went. His pictures of the dead bears graced the pages of newspapers across the country, including the Hungry Horse News. 

Author Jack Olsen drew heavily on Ostrom’s work for his book, “Night of the Grizzlies” which chronicled the deaths and the aftermath of the tragedy. 

Ostrom had a life-long love affair with Glacier. He wrote three books on his adventures, “Glacier’s Secrets, Beyond the Roads and Above the Clouds,” “Wondrous Wildlife” and “Glacier Secrets, Goat Trails and Grizzly Tales.”  

He wrote a children’s book, the “Yum Yoogle Snook Wild Beastie Book” when he was 90. 

Many of his exploits in Glacier were with best friend and hiking companion Ivan O’Neil, who founded Western Building Center. The two grew up together. 

Ostrom was preceded in death by his parents, Logan and Hazel Ostrom, brothers Ritchey and Alva, sister Dora Lee "Dode" Wolf, his wife Iris, and sons Shannon and Clark.  

He is survived by daughters Heidi (Scott) Duncan and Wendy (Shawn) Ostrom-Price. He has three grandchildren, Tana and Parker Duncan and Wyatt Price and two great-grandsons, Zenovio “Novi” Negron and Aridian “Ridi” Price. 

The family is not planning a public celebration of life. 

    George Ostrom gives his morning report from the studio of KGEZ radio in 2016. (Chris Peterson/Hungry Horse News FILE)
  

    George Ostrom with his children’s book in 2018. (Chris Peterson/Hungry Horse News FILE)
  

    George Ostrom was known as the voice of the Flathead Valley. (Daily Inter Lake FILE)