The West Old & New Vol. III Issue II February 2014 | Page 12

while I was working. We did not always agree and I, having been brought up to respect my elders would try my best to keep my
big mouth shut. Often our differences involved the school system, its teachers and policies.
Edna was interested in politics and well-informed. Her son, Harry Billings and his wife Gretchen were well-known journalists
and published the liberal newspaper, "The People's Voice" in Helena. They were awarded the Sydney Hillman award of outstanding liberal journalism and were given an all-expense paid trip to New York to receive the award.
Occasionally Senator Mike Mansfield would stop by the newspaper office while I working. He and Edna seemed to be good
friends. I was excited to meet him; a tall, thin, quiet gracious man.
Another visitor I remember well was the town's only attorney, Bertram P. Burger. He was a somewhat seedy-looking man,
with a slouching shuffling gait and downcast gaze, always dressed in a suit and tie. He ran a classified ad every week, which never
varied, and he paid for the ad a year in advance. It read: "Bertram P. Burger has moved his law office to the Ribardy house on
Main Street. Edna would always ask him if he wanted to change his ad, but he never did. I realized later it was illegal for doctors
or attorney to advertise at the time, so even though he was at the house for several years, I presume his notice was technically
within the law.
Edna had the great pleasure of becoming a world traveler in her later years, visiting many exotic places such as Egypt, Mexico, places in Asia. On her return, the community was treated to very interesting accounts of her travels, and she always brought
me a gift, a bracelet from Siam, dainty silver filigree earrings from Egypt; always something exotic and exquisite.
Edna published the paper until 1959, when she was forced to retire after crushing her hand in a job press. She was seventyseven years old. Her son moved her to Helena, where she lived until her death in 1967.
Edna was a woman of great strength, courage, independence and self-reliance. Her life was a model for women of her generation, and of every generation. It was my great good fortune to have known her.
Deanne Kendrick lives in Missoula, Montana and grew up in the town site of Camas on the Flathead Indian Reservation. This story
was originally printed in the Hot Springs Journal in 2011.
Editors Note: In 1923-24 the banks in the area around Hot Springs and Camas failed. Gannaway was offered a bankrupt newspaper
plant as a way of salvaging money she’d had in a savings account. Gannaway had no idea how to run the press and did not have electricity at the time. One can only imagine the studied look that may have crossed her wide determined face, her work-a-day hands
splayed on feminine hips as she considered a mechanical operation and a business endeavor that would make her one of Montana’s
only female newspaper entrepreneur to my knowledge.

Women's Stories of Surviving in the West
One of my favorite books is located in the Preston Town and Country Library in Hot Springs, Montana. "Settlers and Sodbusters," is an edition of stories about the people who moved to this area of the reservation beginning in 1910. It was compiled as a
Bicentennial Project of the Hot Springs Historical Society in 1976.
Ruth McHenry-Greggs arrived with her family in Lonepine, Montana and tells , she tells how her
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mother was happy to see a nice house with geraniums in the window because it signaled to her that