Polsonite remembered as great city promoter
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Editor,
Last week’s Journal identified Polson’s 4th of July parade Grand Marshall, Ethel McAlear Montgomery, as Fay McAlear’s niece. She’s his daughter. I’m the niece – or one of twelve.
But you got it right about his promoting Polson. Uncle Fay was driven to get Life Magazine to come to Polson so we could be discovered – and then the people would come. He also knew there was a big fish in Flathead Lake and was consumed in fishing for it and finding others who saw it and would fish for it.
He organized a fishing derby in the ‘50s and wrote all the prize checks from the McAlear Realty bank account since the rain squashed the entrance receipts and Life Magazine appearance. He didn’t see the museum sturgeon come out of the lake but he believed it did and offered a sizeable reward to anyone who could prove that it didn’t.
He organized the 1960 Man vs. Horse race, again hoping Life Magazine would come, but the rain intervened and the man had to stop. He headed the first All-Class PHS Reunion committee in 1960 culminating in a banquet with 1000 people in the school gym.
He badgered anyone who would stand still long enough to raise the funds for the Polson Main Street Museum. He put off high school graduation to help his parents homestead but proudly received a PHS diploma when he was 20. Although you’d see him on the street with his chaps and buckskin jacket, he distinguished himself nationally selling life insurance.
Sharon Coppedge Fulton
Polson
