Hungry Horse News, Friday, July 22, 1966

Retired Teacher Mrs. Louise (St. John) Lamson Dies

  Funeral services for Mrs. Fred Lamson, the former Mrs. Louise St. John, Columbia Falls sixth grade teacher, were held Monday at 2 p.m. with the Rev. Raymond D. Brown of Holy Nativity Episcopal Church officiating. Services took place at the Catron Chapel with the remains forwarded to Spokane for cremation. Mrs. Lamson died July 14. She was 74.

  This most interesting lady lived in Coram and taught sixth grad in Columbia Falls until she retired in 1960. On July 6, 1962 she was married to Fred W. Lamson, at her home Trails End in Coram. The bride met the groom in 1909 when they both attended River Falls (Wis.) State Teachers College. Years passed and they met again when she was enroute to Europe. They spent winters in Arizona. He survives as do three daughters; Mrs. Jack (Eloise) Hamil, and Mrs. Joseph (Beth) Rife both of Portland, and Mrs. Clifton (Jacqueline) Momberg former Columbia Falls teacher, who has been teaching in Wiesbaden, Germany. There is a brother in New Zealand. There are seven grand children.

  The District 6 faculty May 9, 1960 held a retirement party for Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Myrtice Powell. L.W. McNiel president of the district M.E.A. unit presided and Teddy Andrew represented the school board. The following is a reprint of a portion of the Hungry Horse News story written about Mrs. Lamson when she retired in 1960. Mrs. Louise St. John, who teaches sixth grade in Columbia Falls is retiring as a school teacher after 30 years of service and raising a family. She looks back to 1957 when she was 65 as the most interesting summer of her life. That summer she spent three weeks on a whaling ship in Labrador and New Foundland waters, attended Mt Allison University at Sackville New Brunswick for a month taking weaving and art and then attended a writer's conference at Middlebury, Vt. This was the famed "Breadloaf" conference , and a high point in this Columbia Falls teacher's life was hearing the famed poet Robert Frost "talk" his poems. She continued, "He prefers to instead of recite them."

MODERN ADVENTURES

  Summers for Mrs. St. John included 1957 when she visited her daughter Jackie Graves , a former Columbia Falls teacher, who was in charge of an Air Force recreational program at an American base in New Foundland. That summer Mrs. St, John was shipwrecked for three days on rocks off the Labrador coast. She returned for a real outing on a whaling vessel in 1958, and painted pictures of the outing. Last summer Mrs. St. John went to Colorado Springs to visit Jackie, who now teaches at the public school on the Air Force Academy grounds. Then she continues to Florida where another daughter, Mrs. J.W. (Beth) Rife teaches sixth grade at Wauchula. Beth received her masters degree last summer at the University of Florida. Before returning to Columbia Fall, Mrs. St. John spent two weeks at Penland Arts and Crafts School in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

HOSTESS AT SWIFT CURRENT

  This summer she will be hostess at Swiftcurrent dining room in Glacier National Park and the next summer she will be going to Florida. Mrs. St. John isn't retiring. She is just finishing classroom teaching. She was born in Chicago in 1892, the daughter of an Episcopal rector, Turberville Cory-Thomas. Her mother died when she was three, and her father and brother went back to England for nine years. Mrs. St. John lived with her mother's sister and husband, Mr. and Mrs. William Putnam in River Falls, Wis. She did not go to high school, but passed entrance exams at 14 for River Falls Normal, as it was called then. At the age of 16 she was teaching at a rural school for $30 a month and added, "I saved money." Miss Cory-Thomas, rural teacher, rode a bicycle home weekends. She commented that the Manion family of Kalispell came from near Big River where she taught. Appropriately the Manions lived in the Irish settlement of Donegal.

TO MONTANA IN 1909

  Later she returned to school and was graduated, and then taught at Fort Morgan, Colo. Her first trio to Montana was in 1909. Her uncle was Isaac C. Foster, bookkeeper for the Kalispell Lumber Co. Then she went to Vancouver B.C. where her father was editor of a daily newspaper. She taught on Gambier Island, 50 miles from Vancouver, and remarked; "I like islands." She met John Graves at Athens near present day Marion in southwest Flathead County. They were married Easter Sunday 1913 at the Episcopal Church, Kalispell and we had 18 wonderful years. Mr. Graves died in 1931 within a week after they returned to make their home near River Falls, Wis., on the family homestead that dated back to 1860. It was pneumonia.

FAMILY TO SUPPORT

Mrs. St. John with three little girls - Jackie was then eight months old - returned to the Flathead. She attended Western Montana College of Education at Dillon in 1932; taught at the State Orphan's Home at Twin Bridges for $65 a month, and then at Rollins for $75 and $90 a month, and next taught in Polson. For three years she was Lake County superintendent of schools. In 1947 she went to Alaska, and "that's when my life began." Her youngest daughter, Jackie, was in college at Dillon. Mrs. St. John worked as a reporter on the Chronicle at Ketchikan, taught on Chichigof Island, north of Sitka, students were Indians, Eskimos and white. Then she returned to Polson for a year, and back to Alaska for two more years, teaching at the Minefield home for neglected children. In 1951 she returned to the Flathead and a year at Coram where she has an attractive home on U.S. Highway2. For the past seven years , this teacher, who has lived a full and interesting life, has teaching and inspiring Columbia Falls sixth graders.