Flathead Lake Lodge

The Sam ‘Bear’ Averill family just arrived from Alberta Canada to a homestead on the Swan River, directly across from the historic Kelly and Evans Lodge, the owners of Anaconda Copper Company, the richest corporation in the World at the time. This story is transcribed from Les Averill’s long hand notes written at age 75, just before a massive stoke, as he recalls his early years growing up in the Flathead Valley. After growing up on the Swan River and Somers Mt. he later acquired land and began Flathead Lake Lodge and reacquainted with the young lady in his memory.

This is a recollection of my early years as a young boy who lived a normal life during the difficult times of the 1920’s. In my 75 years, I have experienced the “American Dream” in that you can become anything you want with enough hard work, passion and dedication to your dream.

World War 11 launched me into a world adventure at a young age and later to return to my home state of Montana to spend a lifetime creating a unique dude ranch business, cattle ranches and various other ventures. As I get older the early memories become more vivid.

This is a unique story about how a relationship comes full circle from childhood dreams to fulfilling those dreams, and creating two family friendships, created over a lifetime between the poor caretakers son and the daughter of one of the world’s grandest entrepreneurial families.

Born in Taber Alberta Canada in 1920. My first clear recollection of daily living starts on the beautiful Swan River in northwest Montana at about age 5-7. My mother and father had migrated west through Canada and were successful horse ranchers in Alberta, raising large numbers of draft horses trained to pull sugerbeet wagons. Some wagon teams would be as many as 18 horses. Shortly after my birth my parents migrated south to Montana from the cold plains of Alberta. They lost their life savings due to the horrific draught of the 1919-20’s. It only took two years for Mother Nature and a little bad luck to wipe out a 6,000 acre ranch and cash savings of $20,000, a substantial holding in those years. During the draught my father turned his horses loose on the plains, took his 4 best horses and family and headed south to the newly laid railroad bed, build with Chinese labor on the east side of Glacier Park. He followed the rail bed which led into the spectacular, green and lush Flathead Valley. Here he found work at the Kelly and Evan’s Lodge, the primary owners and officers of Anaconda Copper Co. a company of unfathomable wealth at the time.

My parents took up residence in an old 3 room log cabin across the river from the huge Lodge and surrounding acreage. In front of the cabin the river was swift and carried large logs and driftwood down the river. My mother worried about the current with four young boys, having come from the prairie with little water. I was very young at the time and the youngest of a family of four boys. I thought life was pretty terrible having 3 older brothers making me do things for them and never letting me tattle to my mother how they treated me. If I had told her, the results would be three beatings. One from each that I didn’t cherish, so I learned to bear the rougher parts and keep my mouth shut about my older brothers.

Early in the mornings I would stroll down to the dock, which projected into the shallow water at the river’s edge. There I would sit on the far edge with my legs dangling so my feet would reach the flowing water. Here, I would sit and listen to the trickling of the rushing river as it ran into the unknown down the river valley. The smell of the pine forest and fresh green grass along the shore gave me vigor and great ideas about adventure. I had never been to the land in the far distance which giant mountains and snow covered peaks were visible.

As I sat on the dock looking across the river I could see the beautiful summer homes on Kelley and Evans Lodge property. There were acres of green manicured grass, hedges and flowers of every color. Something my parents said they had never seen before. Among the groves of Pine and Birch trees stood quaint log cottages, guest houses and many other fine looking log buildings that shone in the evening sunlight. In the distance I could see the big silver barn, where they kept the wonderful string of ponies and a small herd of jersey cows. Beside the barn stood the great silo. All this beauty was like a dream. It was hard to believe anybody could build and own such a big and beautiful place. In front of the main cottages was a fine dock, protected by a water breaker from the current of the main river. There they kept three boats. One a big family runabout with polished mahogany decks, windshield and spot light. Next to this lavish boat stood a smaller row boat. There were a number of smaller boats for fishing and small motors. To protect the boats, from the sun and rain, there was a bright colored tent constructed as a roof . Along the shore the river bank was built up with a rock terrace, topped with a bright green bridge. This terrace seemed to follow the shore to the bend in the river. I thought it went on forever. Sitting on the dock is where I would dream of having enough money so one day I could live like these folks, with boats and horses.

Every morning my father would get into a small row boat and row across the river and pull his boat up beside the fine boats under the tent. This made me feel good as my fathers’s little craft had a place alongside the grand boats. My father went to work each day as a caretaker of the many buildings and livestock barn at the Kelley and Evans Lodge. I could sit on the dock and watch my father mowing the great lawns with a horse drawn mower. He would wave at me as he went by. I felt so proud to be able to wave at someone who even touched such a beautiful place. There was my father spending all day there. I often wondered how he felt, once having his own 6,000 acre ranch. I was to young to recall what it was like or if it had a similar beauty. From hearing my parents talk of the dry windy plains, I didn’t get an idea that Taber Alberta was a very nice place to live.

Sometimes in the afternoon, I would see small children my age playing on the grass at the Lodge. There were often 3 little girls dressed in bright white dresses playing. How I wished I could go over and play with them, but my father would never take me. He always said, “those children are not the children to play with you”. I could never quite figure out why they weren’t, after all we were just children looking to have fun. I used to get tired of playing with my older brothers, who were all very large for their age and always bullied me around. So, most of the day was spent on the dock fishing or exploring the forest by myself, as I wasn’t interested in playing cowboys and Indians with my brothers.

Someday I’m going to cross this river and walk up and touch the fine green lawn. The roofs of the log lodges were made of copper that glisten in the sunlight. Every day I would wish I would grow up quickly so I could row the small boat across the swift current to the other side of the river.

One day while I was sitting on the dock and wishing, I saw a young girl come down to the fancy docks. She was beautiful with a nice dress and she waved at me. I waved back so hard I nearly fell off the dock. So I hollered across the river, hello and she returned hello. Gosh, was I ever proud to have ever spoken to anyone who lived at such a fine place. One day I finally got up enough nerve to holler for here to come play on this side of the river. She didn’t answer, so I felt sad and blue. Then I watched as she climbed into a small boat and braved the current to row to my side of the river. When she approached the dock I held the boat while she climbed out and she tied it to the dock. She was so beautiful I couldn’t say anything. Finally she said, “hello, what is your name, my name is Kathrine Ann, but just call me K”. After just standing there starring, I finally got out my name was Les. Well Les, she said, my mommy told me I could come over and play with you this afternoon if I was home by 3:00. What shall we play? I suggested playing Indians. K replied, I’ve never played Indians. I then went running after my brothers to play Indians with us. I was an Indian warrior and K was an Indian maiden and we dressed all up in our Indian outfits we had made out of chicken feathers and hawk feathers we found in the woods. I wore my warrior head dress of feathers that reached the ground and told K each feather stood for a scalp. I put a feather in her hair and string of necklace rocks around her neck and off into the woods we went.

K and I were to hide in the woods while my brother were to find and try to capture us. We ran deep into the wood an up the river. I don’t know how far we ran but didn’t stop till we were both completely out of wind, so we stopped by a green spot near a lagoon from the river. Here we made a hide away camp and told K we hide here till my brother warriors find us and carry you away. Here we picked nice soft greens to hide us from sight from the trail. Then we sat down by each other exhausted and just looked at each other. I had never been near or been around girls and didn’t know how to talk to her. So I started to tell her of the wonderful things there were in the forest, all the birds and wild animals. I told her about the deer that came every night to our garden to eat our cabbage and carrots and how I would go out and chase them away. She listened with much interest and said she had never been allowed to go deep into the forest. She laid her head down in my lap where I could look down into her beautiful dark brown eyes. They sparkled with youth and as she smiled at me I put my arms around he shoulders and held her tight. We were about 7-9 years old and stayed there several hours being quiet so my brothers wouldn’t find us. They never did. We decided we better go back home, but from that day on this little green lagoon would be ours and we would go there every time we were together. K was back in the row boat and home by 3:00 as we didn’t want to get in trouble and spoil a good thing as we both had such a good time. She said she would try to come back another day. As she rowed back across the river I waved good bye to her and was the happiest little kid in the whole world.

That night I did my chores of getting in the wood for both the kitchen stove and the front room fireplace. I also gathered in the eggs from the chicken coop and went whistling about my work with the greatest of pleasure.

Things in the world had changed. Everything I had to do for my mother seemed like a pleasure. She was quite surprised at my sudden change of attitude and sudden desire to finally help around the house. I finally told her about K and how she rowed across the river and was such a nice little girl. My Mother just grinned and finally said, I’m please my little boy has a girl to play with.

In our log cabin, to get to the loft room, we went thru a trap door in the main room, up a ladder to where two old steel frame beds with feather ticks. One for my older brother Ken and Stan, so my next brother Cliff and I slept on a straw tick. The ticks were nice and soft and when you lay down they came up around you to keep you warm. Whenever my brothers moved you could hear the creaking of the metal beds. After a couple good pillow fights and scolding from my mother we would go to sleep as every day was active and required a good sleep.

Some nights I would wake up in the middle of the night and have to go. This required lighting the lantern, climbing down the ladder to the outdoor biffy. As soon as I got inside I would lock the door as every night in the forest setting you could hear the howls and noises of animals moving through the brush. Sometimes a bear would tear up around the cabin looking for scrap food. My father was always ready with his rifle if a bear broke in the cabin. As I would sit there on the cold wood seat, I enjoyed looking at the picture in the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs in the lantern light to get my mind off the noises in the night. Several times in the biffy I heard animals so close I was afraid to unlock the door and run to the cabin. So I would call for Mother so loud that she would wake up and come and get me with rifle in hand.

She always made me feel safe as I know she was really good with a rifle. One night after calling for Mother, the night ended with a dead mountain lion. All mother could see in the lantern light was the cats two eyes where she made a perfect shot. Dad woke up this time and later tanned the lion’s skin and put it in our room.

Every few days the rest of the summer, K’s mom let her row across the river and play with me.

We would go running down the river bank to our hiding place on the lagoon. This place was ours and only ours. We planned how some day we would build a large cottage on the lagoon among the pine trees and build a dock and have fine boats like her parents. She told me of life in the big cities, a place I had never heard of or seen. She told how she went to a special school and the schools for the other kids in the city were very, very large with hundreds of children. K told me of the tall buildings, hundreds of cars, trains and big ships at huge docks. She talked of their fine house in Butte Montana where the copper and silver mining took place. I heard about their big house in New York and the huge company her father was the head of.

I told K of the farm in Canada that my parents lost due to the draught and I never lived there but it sounded boring as described by my older brothers. I told her the only school I had ever attended was a log cabin with only a few students and one teacher. We were very much engrossed in each other’s stories and made big planes for the future. K was more aggressive in her conversations and said she loved me because I wasn’t a city kid. As very young kids, we had big plans.

The time came for K to leave the Lodge for the winter. Dad would still go across the river every day in the winter to work on upkeep of the many buildings. He had started to build a new barn as the old one burned down. The day the Kelly and Evans families left for the winter, Dad took me across the river to say good bye to K. She cried a little and told her mom she didn’t want to go back to the city. Her mother told her not to be foolish and scolded her. I felt sad standing there, finally K came over and kissed me on the cheek and handed me a little package. I turned bright red as I had never had a girl kiss me before and to be given a gift from a girl was unheard of. The good byes were finally said and the family drove off in their shinning huge car that looked a mile long with lights built in the fenders. The gift was a brass compass.

The winter was long and cold. It had snowed several feet and the wind seems to always blow.

Each day we would get up at 5:30 in the morning and Mother would already have a hot breakfast of mush and our lunches ready for us. Dad would have the team hitched up using a lantern to see the connections on the sleigh. Kenny was the oldest brother so he always got the privilege of driving the team to the school house. It was six miles through the snow and drifts to the school house and we would cuddle up in the straw and blankets wrapped around us to keep out of the cold. Along the route we would pick up the Peterson children and the school teacher, a very homely lady about 50 years old, who seemed to me the meanest person in the world. About every day she would whip my brother Clifford. Of course he was a regular devil and wouldn’t do anything she wanted him to do.

In the school there were only 14 children that learned from 1st to 8th grade. Each grade sat in different rows and the teacher would start with the first grade and work up. While one grade was being taught the rest of the pupils were to study their lessons. That was hard for me to do as next to me sat a little girl by the name of Peggy Horn. We would sit and hold hands until the teacher caught us and slapped our hands with the pointer. The teacher would then need to hold Peggy in her lap for a long time to stop her from sobbing. I felt proud that she hit me and I didn’t cry.

One cold winter morning upon the sleigh arriving at school I found a hind quarter of a frozen beef hanging over the stove used to heat the school. We discovered an eighth grader John Forson had found a frozen cow and cut off a portion to unthaw and cook over the stove. This made the teacher very mad. The result wasn’t what John expected. The teacher pretended she didn’t even see the beef hanging there and went on with the class just like nothing happened.

After several hours the beef started to melt with blood dripping down on the hot stove and the odor given off was not pleasant. Still, the teacher mad no remarks and went on as usual. By afternoon the smell got so terrible the children couldn’t stand it. So finally John got up and said the jokes on me. So I’ll move the dammed thing out of here before we all suffocate. Mrs. Guees was satisfied and she made John write the Declaration of Independence in long hand several times.

This winter was long and bitter cold. The snows were heavier than usual and we had three blizzards so bad we couldn’t get thru with the sleigh to school. The log cabin was hard to keep warm and Dad and my brothers spend many days cutting firewood. It was so cold the mow where we slept couldn’t stay warm, so our tick was moved closer to the fireplace in the large room where we slept until the winter blizzards passed.

Dad wasn’t making much money working as a caretaker but there wasn’t any other work to be had. So many days were spent hunting deer, rabbits and fishing and working a garden all summer. Our diet was largely meat and potatoes which were easy to grow and store.

Regardless of the cold and snow, when Sunday came along, we filled the hay rack on the sleigh full and hitched the team and off we go. Sometimes the team would break trail with snow up to their knees. It was great to hear the bells on the harness jingle and the runners cutting thru the snow. The great peaks of the Rockies sometimes glisten in the infrequent sunlight. We were in our best dress layered over long johns headed to the chapel to meet with God. We traveled several miles to the little white chapel which was a welcome site as it was always warn inside.

There it sets with a white picket fence in a clearing in the pines. The roof is surrounded by hanging ice sickles from the heat inside. The big bell sound rebounds off the mountains and breaks the silence of the sleigh gliding through the snow. We arrive and unhitch the team and throw blankets over them as they are wet from sweat. As we enter the chapel everyone takes their seats in familiar places after being greeted by the pastor. The Pastor leads the people with great skills and the word of God is given to both young and old.

Those in the chapel seem to be people who have taken up a piece of property in the wilderness and pioneered it into a home and productive farm. All this was accomplished from the sweat and their hard work and they seemed driven by a faith in God.

This winter moved on and old Mother Nature started to bring the warm winds of spring. The snow disappeared and the green grass begins to sprout and the smell of fresh pine fills the air.

The spring also raises the Swan River as the snow melts and rushes to the low land by raging river and the current rushes where it is unsafe to cross.

I know spring is here when the red robins arrive and start building their nests.

As spring arrives I watch Dad working the grounds at the Lodge, planting flowers, trimming hedges and painting areas. Preparing a dream home for the summer guest to arrive.

I found my heart wondering and waiting when and if K was coming back this summer. Finally a letter came for Dad to have the Lodge ready for guest to arrive next week. My heart jumped for joy. If K was going to come to the mountains this year she would come next week with her parents. Dad worked from daylight to dark readying for their arrival. Finally the day came. On a Saturday afternoon the huge car drove down the main cottage. I stood on the dock waiting and watching for K to get out of the car. Finally she appeared. K looked towards my side of the river and gave a long wave. I waved back with a joy I had never known before. She came running down the enormous lawn toward the river. My, did she ever look grand. She wore a white printed dress with red flowers around her knees. She wore a small white hat which made her look so much more like a lady than a little girl. We hollard a welcome back a for the across the river, but she said she couldn’t come over until another day.

Was I ever happy, I felt like I could whip a pen full of wild cats. I whipped through my chores of the day with a whistle on my lips. I could hardly wait another day to come. My brothers noticed the sudden change in me and took a good ragging the rest of the day. I asked Mother to have my white shirt all clean and I would heat the iron press on the stove, then she would iron it smooth for when K was coming over. So Mother fixed it all up for me. She also heated a good bath on the stove for me before I went to bed. That night I dreamed of the grand time we were going to have this summer; my 9 or 10th birthday was coming in July. The following day I heard the small rowboat being slid into the river. I charged down to the dock to meet K. When I got there the swift current was drifting her downstream as spring runoff was still happening. As I pulled her boat to safety, K put her arms around my neck and kissed me upon the lips. The thrill ran down my spine to the tip of my toes as I again went red with embarrassment as I know my brothers were watching me. It was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me regardless of who was watching.

Les, she said, it’s so good to see you. My you have grown; you are a full 3 inches taller than I am this year. We sat on the edge of the dock for a while and talked of the past winter. She told me how happy she was to be back on the swan river near me. She said, Les, let’s go to our hiding place on the lagoon. She took me by the hand and started running. Before we got there she was all tired out as she wasn’t used to running in the forest, so we began walking slowly.

There it was, just as we left it with pine needles and leaves covering the floor. We strolled over to the lagoon and skipped rocks for awhile. We were both surprised when I looked for skipping rocks and found two perfect Indian arrowheads on the shore. I gave them to K to have her mother make a necklace for her. We gathered some new pine bedding for the hideout to make it softer.

We sat there in the fresh grass and she told me about her winter in the big city and how much she missed being here and how much fun we were going to have this summer. It seemed like a dream, but a wonderful dream it was.

Every few days we would make our trip down to the lagoon and our little hideout. We played at the water’s edge and in the forest. I built a lean too over the hideout for bad weather and left an opening facing the beautiful snowcapped mountains. I knew every trail and part of the river. From a young age I explored with my brothers and on my own, looking for animals, trapping and playing cowboy and Indians.

K seemed to know so much about people and how they lived and where. She told me about people, cities, oceans, books and even about how girls fall in love. That seemed a little strange to me as I had never thought about it before, but how true she was in describing the emotions. From that day forward, K was my every thought. We spent many days together and the summer passed all too quickly. It was soon time for K to leave again and I had visions of another long cold winter. Little did I know this was the last time I would see K again until both of us were adults, married with families. Serendipity brought us together again as lifelong family friend’s right into our sunset years.

K left for New York again as the summer came to a close. That fall, my Parents decided we lived to far from the school house, so we moved to a two room log cabin just across the road from the school in Ferndale. This seemed wonderful not having to get up early and endure a long cold sleigh ride to school. My family didn’t have a car because of the problems with the country my parents called the depression. A car wouldn’t get through the deep snow like the team and wagon like my father had run in Canada. He used them for dragging firewood, going to school and church and plowing the ground. He dragged trees out of the forest and cut wood for the school and sold wood to the local families for money to live during the winter. He said the depression took the life out of him after losing his big ranch and savings in Canada but would keep moving the family until he found good work.

Moving away from the river made me feel sad as I learned to understand the river and currents and fishing holes for miles up and down. What I feared most is I wouldn’t be there next summer when K would come back.

Next summer found me farther away than ever. My family moved another 10 miles to a small home on the Flathead River at the Holt crossing, where my father became the ferry master at the river. Instead of seeing Dad cutting grass with a horse drawn mower, I would now be riding back and forth across the Flathead River, hauling wagons and cars on the ferry. The ferry was a big wooden barge that would hold six cars or wagons and was attached to an overhead cable. I remember many times the barge would get caught on the cable and be stuck in the middle of the river. My father was an enormously strong man with huge hands and arms and would pull the ferry across the river by hand over hand on the cable when it would get stuck. I would try to help as everyone else did on the barge, but it was very difficult in the river current.

The next year I would ride a school bus for the first time that came by the front of our house. I had learned to hate school so I didn’t put much work into my books. It was much more fun to play baseball and go fishing than stay home and study. Mother tried so hard to make me study. She had so much hard work to do she didn’t have much time to help us with our school work. Even though I neglected to read and study, my ability to excel came easy. I was starting to recognize my learning abilities were very good in many areas.

I always wondered what happened to K. It had been over four summers now since I had seen her and I felt I was growing up to be quite a man. I was the strongest kid in my class and sometimes the kids wouldn’t let me play football with them as they said I played to rough. The teacher would holler for me to help break up fights among the bullies. I think K also taught me that girls were for being nice to, something I never forgot what she told me that day in our hideout.

We later moved again to the small town of Somers and lived in a small row house for the mill worker families near the sawmill when I was a teenager. Somers Mill was the grand place to work as it was busy and had lots of higher paying jobs.

My Dad finally found a good job as fireman at the sawmill in the pickling plant. This is where the ties were treated with black pentacloraphil to keep the wood from rotting. He worked as a fireman until his later years and could no longer work.

Logs were floated down the Swan river past our original log cabin, then to Bigfork, then across flathead lake to the mill. The lake was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, surrounded by mountains. I had only lived 10 miles from the lake, but spent my years on the river and never really saw the expanse of the lake until up on the hill in Somers. People were planting and raising sweet red cherries and apples around the bay in Bigfork as the soil and climate in this area seemed very good. The large lake kept the air from freezing near the lakeshore which protected the crops from freezing. My brothers and friends as we grew older made fun adventures of sneaking into the cherry orchards at night to eat the cherries. They tasted amazing, but eating so many always followed up with more than frequent runs to the bushes or the outhouse.

Somers is a mill town of about 1,000 people with a bank, general store and school. The mill is Somers lumber company, owned by Great Northern Railroad and where they cut the railroad ties for the roadbed. The very railroad bed my father followed down from Canada as he moved the family from Taber.

Somers was said to be a typical small American town. The streets ran up and down, the homes were in rows along the street. There were only two main stores, the lumber company store operated by the company and the peoples mercantile operated by Everett Sliter where I got my first job delivering supplies and groceries to the town people. I recall being 15. There was a state bank, meat market. On top of the high hill stood the huge company house called the mansion with three stories and about 15 rooms. Around the house were planted fruit trees, green lawns and carriage house. It was grand, but nothing like the place K lived in the summer.

It was the big house the manager of the lumber company lived and conducted the business. He drove a big LaSalle car around the lumber yard to show his importance. From the windows in the house on the hill, the manager could see all directions towards the mill and the homes in town. Every family’s parents worked at the mill and they expected hard work. If any kids were caught out late at night around town their parents could lose their job. Since there were no jobs elsewhere during the depression, our parents kept a very close eye on us. As kids we developed a secret light code with candles in the windows to signal other teenagers. The kids in this town became amazingly close friends as they had to rely on the trust of each other or lose everything. Many later married from within this teenage group, including me who married Dolores Dufour who grew up next door in another row house. She was very bright and well-read and a beautiful piano player. He mother Julia ran the company hotel and diner in Somers.

As I turned 16, the mill hired me to stack lumber. This was a tough job, but I was strong and found the work made me stronger. The logs would float into the mill pond to wait their turn to be pulled and cut into railroad ties. There was a big screen burner that glowed on top as the scraps were burned. There was a planner shed, a drying shed and a railroad track with small engine that pulled loaded carts around the mill.

Life in Somers was fun as we played on the beautiful sand beach on the north end of the lake and used the small islands as our hide outs. The lake was beautiful but large and dangerous. The large paddle boats that carried freight from Polson sometimes would be lost in the waves.

When I saw the large paddle wheelers it reminded me of K and the stories she told of the huge steam boats and large cities back east. I started to read and study about the cities and other foreign countries my folks were always talking about. It seemed everywhere was in turmoil around the world and a lot of talk about counties going to war again following the horrible WW1. My folks decided that Somers would be their last home as the boys were all getting to the age to take care of themselves. I decided that there was more to see than Somers and would learn to fly and explore the world. I saved all my money from working at Sliters store and pushing lumber at the mill to take flying lessons in Kalispell, 7 miles away.

Les had a stroke and never finished the story. A book “To build a Dream” authored by Rick Graetz picks up the story from here when Les goes off to war and returns to build the Flathead Lake Lodge.

Les went on to get a pilot license for free. He took an aptitude test and placed in the top 1% in his class, thus the newly formed Pan American Airlines paid to get a license and come to work for Pan AM. Soon afterwards the US Army air corps confiscated the Pan Am pilots into the military. Les entered the corps, later to become the US Air Force as a captain. He flew B17’s B29, B25, Corsairs, P51’s and many others, accumulated 5000 flying hours flying around the world to Alaska, China, India, Africa, and the European theater earning major rank.

After returning from the War, les married Dolores and purchased the abandon Flathead Lake Lodge property for all the money he had saved during the war. His dream of building a place like he had seen across the Swan River like K’s family was on his mind. It started as a hunting fishing lodge and grew to become one of the finest ranches in America.

K’s family later sold the Kelly and Evans Lodge. It was in the mid 1970’s, 50 years after meeting K that her family wanted to come back to Montana and booked a vacation at Flathead lake lodge. At first Les and K weren’t aware of the prior connection. It was quite a discovery and Les, Dolores Averill’s and Tom, Ann Keresey families became lifelong friends. The Kereseys vacationed at the Lodge for a decade then purchasing a beautiful home on Flathead lake, later selling the home, only to again to vacation at Flathead Lake Lodge. Ann’s daughter Tess and son Tom both worked at Averill’s, and in the end the whole Keresey family gathered at Flathead Lake Lodge to take one of the grand boats, reminiscent of those at Kelley and Evan’s Lodge, to go out on the lake to spread Ann’s ashes.