A Robert Dennis Gary “Memorial Tribute Page”.

To Robert Dennis Gary, Whose Life Will Live On in His Written: “Memories of Mrs Professor Sarah Vinke”, We Send Our Last Thank-You and Final Goodbye: God Be With You.

By Henry Gurr

On January 9, 2020, I lost my good friend and colleague, Denis Gary. This was rather shocking news, since I had no idea that Mr Gary’s health was declining. Mr. Gary’s last emails to me were on Dec 13 & 15 2019, each concerning how he happily had found two friends to each post Reader Reviews on Amazon.com Re A Woman of Quality = Sarah Vinke Biography: This was our combined project, about which he was anxious to get a paper copy, and read enthusiastically, once it arrived,! .

I’m feeling sense of great loss, of a good friend, and loss of a great colleague, which developed, in our together working on posting his memories of Sarah Vinke and Montana State University(1958 - 1963). I feel cut-short, because none of this can happen anymore. This is such a permanent & abrupt ending. I’m feeling this intently.

I became a Co-worker with Dennis, back in 25 October 2009, as is explained on this page => http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents.SarahVinkeMemories1

Dennis was a most willing and helpful expert to write up all his memories of his favorite Mrs. Professor Sarah Vinke and his other Professors at Montana State College (MSC), as it was known back then. Eventually he became an expert at posting both his Memories on ZMM Quality Website, and as he Googled and found MSC Photos, he learned how to post those also!

We all feel that Dennis left us too soon. With sadness and a heavy heart.

Henry Gurr, ZMMQ SiteMaster. 5 March 2020.

Please Consider Contributing Your Memories To This “Robert Dennis Gary Memorial Tribute Page”.

Please send an Email to HenryG@USCA.edu, with your Memories Of Dennis. AND if you know anyone who was working with Dennis on his Autobiography (including his writing coach and writing teacher): Dennis told me of this 80,000 word effort about three years before he died, but never sent a copy. Please forward this email to persons who might have his autobiography, asking if a copy of Dennis Gary Autobiography, is available anywhere?
ADDED INFORMATION:

A) Part 1: Autobiography Of Robert Dennis Gary. Assembled From His Own Words, As Found In => Interview with David Swingle, Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, on Robert Pirsig, ZMM, MSC, and Bozeman, Montana .
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/DavidSwingleInterview

EXPLANATION: This Interview was conducted during Mr Dennis’ trip back to Bozeman, -- to attend his Gallatin County High School Reunion of the Class of 1956, August 3rd, 2014.

DG: My home town was originally named Saleville, Montana. But in 1927, it was renamed Gallatin Gateway at the request of the Milwaukee Railroad, which had built the Gallatin Gateway Inn just outside of the town. The railroad had run a spur line for tourists from their rail stop near Three Forks; they would bring the tourists in by train and would the next day bus them to Yellowstone National Park to see Old Faithful Geyser, the bears, etc. Thus the Milwaukee Railroad could advertise their service as the Gallatin Gateway to Yellowstone Park. Yellowstone Park was founded in 1870's. The Gallatin Gateway Inn was built many years later, in the 1920's.
…[Henry Gurr ZMMQ Editor's Note: The Gallatin Gateway Inn, ceased operations on February 10, 2013. But it is still listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. . On Aug 5 2019 Tom Thornton drove Tina DeWeese & myself (Henry Gurr), by the front of this venerable old place, and it looked like new and looked to be still in full operation, but likely now under new ownership. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallatin_Gateway_Inn ]

… The Faculty Mountain Trip To Deer Creek Page [see Additional Reading Number 4) below], happened to mention a man named Sales who had founded Salesville, MT. I attended 7th and 8th grade at Salesville Elementary, era 1950. It was a two-teacher school, though it had four classrooms (only two being used).
… In one of our emails, I asked HSG [Re his boyhood farm]: “Are you on an RFD route?” Our ranch didn't even have that! We were so far out, Along US-191, Two Miles Southwest Of Gallatin Gateway, MT , we would have had NO Rural Delivery, so elected to have a PO Box in Gallatin Gateway (Box 50, no less) in a small wood frame building. It was later replaced by a concrete block structure, built and owned by the Postmistress herself! Magazines regularly arrived a day late with thumb prints and page corners turned down. I wonder why?

DG: When I was in the seventh and eighth grade I went to Salesville Elementary School in Gallatin Gateway, Montana. Sales – a Mr. Sales had founded Gallatin Gateway, and the district had never changed the name of the school when I was there to Gallatin Gateway School.

DG: That was a politically riven district. So, Gateway, Slap Town, Salesville, whatever you want to call it, has a very rapid turnover of school administrators and staff. Virtually everything there is controversial. The Monforton family and now there's Simes. Enders – all these families held very tight opinions of what there taxes should be, and they figure they can keep costs down by not allowing people tenure. It's better now.

DG: I think maybe the ranch has sold again, but Ernest Monforton bought my Grandmother Gary's ranch, which we were ranching on after she and my father passed away, and the Monforton’s were our next-door neighbors, although Ernest had built a very large brick or cement block house over by Bozeman Hot Springs. His relatives and employees stayed on the ranch in the old houses there, and we were sort of like their next-door neighbors.
… There was always this conflict because he had been living in our house while he had a ten-year lease on the property and when that was up, my father took the place. So there was a certain conflict there, although the two were always civil with each other. In fact, Ernest told my father if we were going to start raising cattle, be sure it's Herefords not Angus, and he'd even give us the use of one of his bulls so that there wouldn't be any danger of interference with his purebred Hereford line. So there was some cooperation between the two.
… Back to Montana politics, my father was an ultra-conservative, reactionary – sort of a John Birch type.

DG: Well, no. But my father had a degree in Electrical Engineering from Montana State. So he wasn't ignorant.

DG: No. I'm not saying ignorant, but what I'm saying is he'd be working so hard on any Gallatin Valley ranch – it would be incredibly demanding during the [summer] season.

DG: [My father was] Usually too tired and too tied up with ranch problems.
Anyway, my mother taught fifth grade in Vernal, Utah, and so she had studied two years, I think at the University of Utah, but you didn't need a full four years to teach elementary school at the time and one summer she went to the University of Chicago during the Robert Maynard Hutchins era, so she had the ability, maybe not the training . . .
DS: Well, then we, both of us, had the advantages that most of the kids coming out of the boondocks, out of the poor families in Butte or Great Falls wouldn't have.

DG: That's interesting . . . I’m thinking of two things . . . The first two years I taught in Klamath Falls, Oregon, at Klamath Union High School . . . it was the best high school I ever taught in. ]They had:] Four years of Latin, four years of German, French, Spanish, Advanced Placement English, Advanced Placement Physics and Chemistry, full Orchestra, Band . . . [unusual] for this lumber mill town in southern Oregon, but I just got in there and I was told by one of the vice-principals in charge of scheduling that by a fluke any freshman who signed up for General Science and Latin I, had to take college prep Freshman English from me. “So by a process of selection, you got the cream of the crop.” And I asked if he would have any advice for me and he said, “Take the ball and run with it.”
…So I did. I said to myself, “I'm going to make this as much like a college course as I can.” I gave them open book essay tests like in Shakespeare and I told my students, “These questions require you to make up your mind, to take a stand. If you write on both sides of the issue, I'm going to give you a poor grade. If you take one side and defend it with quotations, examples, details, even if I don't agree with you, I'll give you a good grade. And those ninth graders loved that. The other teachers didn't. They were . . .”Oh, no. Multiple choice, true-false, matching – that's the way to go. And you save yourself a lot of work in the process. [This] Gets you home by 4:00 o'clock.

DG: Four or five years later I'm completing a Master's Degree at the University of Oregon, and I meet the boy friend of who I think was one of the best students I ever had, and I told him I had taught at Klamath Union High School, and we were just busing dishes in the school cafeteria to make ends meet during Summer School, and so I told him I had taught at KUHS and he said, “Oh, that's where I went my last year, not my first three years, but I graduated from KU.” And I said, I rattled off a list of my former college prep students and he said, “I know all of them. I'm going back to Klamath Falls this weekend to a party at one of their homes.” And I said, “Well, tell them that Mr. Gary or Dennis Gary says, 'Hi.'”

DG: I gave up drinking [any alcohol] in 1971 because I was having problems with it.

DG: I was voluntarily on a psychiatric ward at Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento for three weeks, sort of going through this nervous breakdown period, and there was someone there getting electro - shock treatments back in the late '60's. And she'd come back so discombobulated. She wouldn't even remember her name for about an hour and then everything would start coming together again. One of her troubles was her son and he was this hippy-ish, cook-ish guy and I thought, “I don't think she's crazy. I think her son is.” You know . . . and since then we've had books like the “Manufacture of Madness” by Thomas Szasz and thinks like that.

B) Part 2:Autobiography Of Robert Dennis Gary. Assembled From His Own Words, As Found In => A Student’s Memories of “Mrs.” Professor Sarah Vinke and Her English Department at Montana State College, Bozeman MT (1956-1960. )
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents.SarahVinkeMemories1

Below, I have written my memories of Professor Sarah Vinke and the MSC English Department for the years I was there as a student and an English Major.
I think my main contribution can be remembered incidents that the reader interprets from one's own perspective. I think the literature/writing person comes from a somewhat different perspective than the philosophical/psychoanalytical person.

Thus, Freud could say that everything in his system was in The Brothers Karamazov. But Dostoevsky just presents the story, interpret it as you will. According to Joseph Frank in his critical biography of Dostoyevsky, Dostoyevsky's editor would ask him how he could think like that and Dostoevsky would reply that he didn't think like that, his characters did. This is turning into a Proustian Remembrance of Things Past (In Search of Lost Time) . In regard to my approach to Vinke, I am reminded of the Isherwood title'' I AM A CAMERA. '

To put it another way, a year ago, when I was in the hospital recovering from a total knee (joint) replacement, who did I send to pay my rent? A friend, Charles Pitts, who was then homeless and living under a freeway, never fearing that he would pocket
the money.

NOTE: See Further Reading 18), to learn about Charles Pitts.

I attended Montana State College (MSC) from 1956-1960, getting a BS in Secondary Education with an academic major in English. I was a student of Professor Vinke. I took the second quarter of Oral and Written Communication from Dr. Vinke in the
Winter Quarter of 1957 at Montana State College, now Montana State University. Later, at the urging of Jack Barsness, under whom I studied magazine article writing and short story writing, I took Shakespeare and Greek and Roman Classics from Dr. Vinke. I believe Robert Pirsig arrived at MSC in 1959, but by that time my remaining course of study was pretty much cast in concrete, so I never really got to know him. I read ZMM years ago and delved into it again the other day.

Below, I have written my memories of Professor Sarah Vinke and the MSC English Department for the years I was there as a student and an English Major.
I think my main contribution can be remembered incidents that the reader interprets from one's own perspective. I think the literature/writing person comes from a somewhat different perspective than the philosophical/psychoanalytical person.

Nearing graduation, I went to Dr. Vinke’s office to ask her to serve as an employment reference. When I asked Dr. Vinke for permission to use her as a job reference, she seemed delighted. I asked her why she preferred to be called Mrs. Vinke rather than Dr. Vinke and she said because she had a lot harder time getting a husband than a PhD and he didn't last nearly as long. (If memory serves me correctly, Dr. Vinke had been married to the MSC Dean of Agriculture.)
As part of the employment reference office visit, she asked me to tell her something about myself, like where I was from. I told her that despite being born in Chicago, I had essentially grown up at 421 West Main in Bozeman and on the family ranch two miles past Gallatin Gateway, near the foot of Gallatin Canyon and that my father (BS, Electrical Engineering, 1928) and two aunts were graduates of MSC. She said “You mean that you've gone all the way through MSC without telling anyone on the faculty this?” I responded that I didn't think this information had anything to do with me. She said something to the effect that it doesn't have anything to do with you, but it’s wonderful that you wanted to make it on your own. She said I would be surprised at the pressure put on the staff by alums to give their children top grades. "You've got Character, Mr. Gary," Mrs. Vinke said. She followed that with “You're Quality,” and in my bewilderment I told her that I associated the term quality with laundry detergents, coffee brands, and Buicks. Then she went off on a discussion of Character and Quality, but I just remember being surprised and confused by her reaction. For weeks after that in my study room at the Phi Sigma Kappa house or in the dark of the fraternity dormitory, I pondered what she had said.

Weeks later I was still pondering her statements that I “had character and quality”. It was as if I had been given a [huge] charge to do something with my life. Like Pirsig’s [comment in ZMM re Sarah herself], I would say her messages were perhaps Delphic in nature. What did she really mean? I think there is something of the inscrutable in such multi-faceted (complex) characters, as persons like Sarah Vinke. Someone, perhaps Sarah, said when teaching Shakespeare, you must always teach Hamlet last, or you will never get to another play. I can't remember the figures, but even today, new books and essays on Hamlet appear daily.

In fact, the following year [after MSC Graduation], in the darkness of my attic room at Mrs. Elliott's boarding house in Klamath Falls, Oregon, with my lights out and waiting to doze off, I would wonder about it, after a day teaching high school English. What kind of charge had she given me? "You've got Character, Mr. Gary!!" …“You're Quality!!”.

After graduation from MSC, I taught high school English for seven years, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and in the Sacramento River Delta town of Courtland, California.
Klamath Falls was a lumber town in southern Oregon, not that different from the towns I knew in Montana. The Courtland Joint Union High School District was in the Sacramento Delta, an area of California with a culture all its own. The delta is rich in agricultural resources and not heavily populated. Courtland High was 40% Mexican American, 20% Chinese American, 20% Japanese American, and then the rest of us.

After leaving teaching in 1968 following a nervous breakdown, I spent a year in Stockton CA, working as a social worker in Old Age Security, not a good way to recover. Then I entered an Alcohol Rehab program in Sacramento, eventually getting a job as a hotel timekeeper.
…[Henry Gurr ZMMQ SiteMaster’s Note: Having once been a teacher myself, I hope the readers of this document know that teachers in all levels of American public schools are now—and have been—under tremendous pressure. After years in the classroom, they often suffer their own form of "battle fatigue". Perhaps, not as severe as in war, but no less real. And the better teachers are the ones who suffer the most because they keep trying to hold the students and themselves to very high standards. These teachers don't give up, despite often impossible circumstances. And our modern society doesn't help them much. There are of course parallels here to what happened to Robert Pirsig, as reported in ZMM.]

After that, I was unemployed for some time and lived in a boarding house run by Dorothea Puente, Sacramento's serial killer. She may have come close to killing me because on the day I moved out, as a parting gesture, she offered me a "nice, cold glass of ice water." Several hours after that I was vomiting and had diarrhea, then felt weak, but exhilarated, as my body had purged the toxins.

Just imagine, two important women in my life: Sarah Vinke and Dorothea Puente!
Next I moved to Visalia, CA and was a Claims Representative for the US Social Security District Office. It was unfortunately only a one-year appointment.

I returned briefly to Sacramento and then with the proceeds of an unemployment check in my pocket, hitchhiked to San Francisco where I continue to live. I have worked for Eastman Kodak, microfilming at Crocker National Bank, where I was trained as a word processor; at Bechtel Engineering, doing word processing first in Space and Defense where I worked on a bid for a Pentagon contract, and second in Mining and Minerals. Subsequently, I worked under contract doing word processing for the California State Judicial Council/Administrative Office of the Courts; and after that, for the San Francisco District Attorney's Office transcribing police interrogation tapes. Later, I was a shift supervisor for the Tower Records Classical Annex in San Francisco and worked for several call centers.

Looking back for instances when I made a difference, three stand out. I could not have planned for them, but it is as if I had lived all my life preparing for those moments:

And then left.

[Henry Gurr ZMMQ SiteMaster’s Note: And this brings us right around to the central point of ZMM: Caring and being a person of value. Quality.]

A Personal Statement by Dennis Gary
… By inclination, I am a literature person, not a philosopher, although someone with a degree in philosophy has told me that my interest in linguistics puts me in the same ball park. I have only been on (the back of) a motorcycle, and that for less than thirty minutes, twice in my life. I am more of a house plant than an outdoors man, though growing up on a Montana ranch necessitated learning about nature.
…I have walked the streets of Bozeman, wandered the buildings of Montana State College, learned in the classrooms of Sarah Vinke and visited her office, fished from the banks of the Gallatin River, climbed Mt. Blackmore, and been in Cottonwood Canyon.
…All these things are in, or referred to, in ZMM. Like Pirsig, I have looked out the windows of Montana Hall and seen the Madison range. I wondered then how Sophocles and Shakespeare could have made it across such vast expanses, to this cultural oasis, Montana Hall?

I sought Sarah out several years after graduating when I was back in Bozeman briefly, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. I found her address on Arthur Street and knocked on the door. No one answered. Then I noticed a door bell and rang it. A woman answered the door, and I explained who I was and that I wondered if Mrs. Vinke still lived there. She replied that Mrs. Vinke did not, but said it was okay that I had asked.

I was living here in San Francisco when Pirsig's son was murdered. I can remember taking a bus that went past the Zen Center and over to Haight St. to view the scene of the crime. Somehow, it seemed the right thing to do.

Years before, while passing through Bozeman, I entered Montana Hall, while it was empty. It certainly had the feel described by Pirsig in ZMM.
…A few years ago, I made the acquaintance of Walter Sokel, a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and subsequently at the University of Virginia. He has written three books on Franz Kafka, one in German and two in English.
…What coffee shop conversations we had! Me talking to a real expert rather than a self-proclaimed expert! He had been born in Vienna of Slovakian Jewish parents, so had a good start already at understanding a Czech Jew, who was writing in German.
…Sokel was born in 1913 in the city of Freud, Vienna, as he once put it. Sokel fled to this country in 1939 and got degrees from Rutgers and Columbia before coming to Stanford. But despite my lesser credentials, we could communicate instantly and with authority. It was wonderful. I cherish such high points of my life.

Currently, I am living in a room in a residential hotel in San Francisco and making do on what I get from Social Security retirement and a small annuity, courtesy of Wells Fargo, which took over Crocker Bank in 1986. Life on the jagged edge, I sometimes call it. Most of this was typed in the H2O Café on Polk Street in San Francisco, surrounded by drug dealers, prostitutes, the disabled, and a smattering of businessmen, artists, professional people and students.
…I’m about twenty minutes from the Cal Berkeley campus and less than two hours from Sacramento and the Sacramento Delta, none of which I have visited in years.
Sincerely
Dennis Gary
7 February 2010

[SITE MASTER’S NOTE: Here as I complete the approximately tenth editing cycle of the above Dennis’s writings. And despite the fact that I have in the process read this many times, I have a reaction to report. Once again, reviewing and editing Dennis Gary’s whole document I discover that—like reading a good novel—I am suddenly sad when I arrive at the ending! I realize I want the pleasure to continue, which is the mark of a good piece of writing! This is a sincere feeling and reaction.]

Links to Additional Dennis Gary’s Writing Directly Related To His Above Memories

1a) Photos of Faculty, Administrators, and Students at Montana State College: 1956-1960
1b) Further Photos of Faculty, Administrators, and Students at Montana State College: 1956-1960
2) Following the Footsteps of My Mentor, Professor Sarah Vinke: My Life as an English Teacher, and Other Memories
3) Dennis Gary’s Values in Thought and Action: My Standards at School and in My Career
4) Memories of Faculty Mountain Trip To Deer Creek (an MSC Faculty Outing)

C) Part 3:Autobiography Of Robert Dennis Gary. Assembled From His Own Words, As Found In => '' Kay Campeau Interview.
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/KayCampeauInterview
DG = Dennis Gary & KC = Kay Campau.

DG: Verne Dusenberry taught one course called “Approaches to Literature”, which reflected Verne's interest in Anthropology. Personally, I was a little bit bored by it. But then, I was all of 20 years old. Now I might find the course fascinating, but then I didn’t.

DG: Times – they were a changing. Harry Hauser . . . I took “Introduction to Philosophy” from him, and he was in the History Department of all things . . .

KC: Harry Hauser was a fantastic teacher . . . a fantastic intellect. I took “Ethics” from him, and there just could not have been a better teacher.

DG: Pirsig does not mention him by name, but Roland R. Renne, was the president of the college that Pirsig referred to in several places . . . At any rate, times were changing at Montana State rapidly and from just having the reputation earlier in the century of being a “Cow College,” it was really on its way to becoming a full-fledged university, and a lot of really good people were there.

KC: Dr. Renne made sure that the school was on a positive curve. He was a brilliant man who was quite liberal, and that got him into trouble, I think. Of course, right before that was the McCarthy era and so I think the time we're talking about was a little after the McCarthy . . .

DG: Well, the John Birch-er's were on the move at that time. And actually McCarthy was very active in the early to mid '50's.

KC: John Birch-er's were on the move, and they were pretty powerful in this state. Our present day Tea Partyers may have taken over the Bircher goals . . . Long ago, I remember a large road sign outside of Lewistown, Montana saying, "Happiness is being a Bircher."

DG: Maybe, just a couple of incidents occurred at Montana State, and you may have been elsewhere at the time . . . In the spring of 1958, Dr. Dunbar, or rather a group he represented, had invited Eleanor Roosevelt to speak on campus, and Dr. Renne banned her from speaking on the campus and so she spoke at the Wilson Auditorium downtown, and I don't know if you have any memories of that or not?

KC: I'm sorry. I don't have memories of that. It sounds like . . . it doesn't ring true to me because Dr. Renne was such a liberal and of course, Eleanor Roosevelt was too. And I remember Marian Anderson coming to town and not being able to sing because she was black. I wouldn't know why Dr. Renne would not let Eleanor Roosevelt on campus.

DG: We have, on the ZMMQ website of Dr. Gurr, A Monograph by Bob Dunbar of the History Department, who I think you remember, too.

DG: I remember him very well.

DG: And he . . . and Dunbar's explanation was that Renne was trying to protect Montana State and there were a lot people opposed to Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at the time, of her connection with the United Nations, and the McCarthy-ites felt that made her a Communist and stuff like that.
…But Dunbar describes events through the early '60's, and he recounts that Leslie Fiedler of the University of Montana had been invited by the American Federation of Teachers to speak on the campus, and Dr. Renne would not give permission for him to speak . . . so, as with Eleanor Roosevelt, he gave his talk off campus instead. And I attended Fiedler's talk way back then, and what is your take on Fiedler being banned from the campus?

KC: That makes more sense to me now you're talking about it, because essentially Bozeman is a very conservative community. Night before last at our reunion, yours and mine, 1956 Gallatin High class reunion, Nancy Davis Davies, a classmate of ours got up and said, "I'm the only person here tonight from Texas. Only four people from Texas voted for Obama in 2008 and I was one of them!." She got boo-ed. And so even right now, you can tell that Bozeman is a very conservative area, and I think that the University of Montana in Missoula is considered the liberal college, and we at Montana State University are the conservative college, and probably Dr. Renne was protecting the college because the community is so conservative.

DG: Dr. Dunbar felt that it was because Fiedler was thought to be homosexual . . .

KC: During those days that could possibly have been a reason.

DG: Fiedler was married with children. But he had written an essay on homo-eroticisim in American literature entitled Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey. Fiedler had also written an essay for the Partisan Review sometimes referred to as The Montana Face and other times entitled Montana, or the End of Jean Jacques Rousseau. I don't know whether you ever read that or not?

KC: I didn't.

DG: This is an over simplification, but Fiedler more or less stated that Montana would have a split personality until it could reconcile the noble savage of the Montana rodeo with the dirty Indian of the Montana reservation. He stated that like the Negro to the South, exploited for tourist purposes, but denigrated in all other situations, so the Montana Indian.
…He also contrasted the Montana cowboy of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry fame, with the cowpoke who came in off the range to Missoula, Montana, on Saturday night, got dead drunk, and staggered into the nearest whore house.
…And some dentist on the State Board of Regents said, “We don't pay Leslie Fiedler to write those kind of things about Montana.”

KC: That was a long time ago, and I think things have changed, and I think things have changed for the better.

DG: I think it was another factor in Renne's concern. But shortly before that Bayard Rustin, who later ended up in the civil rights movement and was a pacifist but, also, had had a morals charge lodged against him in southern California, involving a gay incident . . .
At the time Dr. Renne, when the American Legion or the VFW objected to Rustin appearing on campus, Dr. Renne had said something to the effect, “He was invited six months ago. One week before he is scheduled is not an acceptable time . . . you should have objected when Rustin was first invited. Besides there's no student on the Montana State campus who shouldn't be prepared to deal with both Communism and homosexuality.” But Renne felt a great deal of pressure for that.

KC: Yes. And I'm sure . . . I don't remember any of that.

DG: So Dr. Dunbar was saying there were reasons for Renne's stands, but in earlier times, when Dunbar was threatened, Renne stood up for him such as when Dunbar was proposing in the late '40's and early '50's that we should seek cooperation with the Soviet Union, not the destruction of the Soviet Union . . .

KC: And this was when?

DG: Around 1950. He got a lot of flak for that.

DG: I'm forgetting what year Renne ran for governor . . . but he lost, of course.

DG: 1964. I was just talking about this Dunbar problem then and later on Dunbar spoke [on radio KBMN] of other topics related to International Relations, and Malcolm Story demanded equal time on KBMN. Malcolm said in his broadcast that if the State Board of Regents didn't fire Robert Dunbar, a vigilante committee should. Considering what vigilante's had done in Montana, and in fact, Nelson Story, the Story family patriarch, was involved . . . it was indeed, a threatening statement.
At any rate, Dr. Renne requested police protection for both Malcolm Story and Robert Dunbar at that time. So it was an era of . . .

KC: I knew Malcolm Story very well.

DG: What was he like?

KC: Oh, he was a funny little man. Our son, Tony, was Malcolm Story's paperboy. Malcolm lived a few blocks from us, and he would come over and chat. He loved to talk about old times. He was very articulate, as was his daughter who is a good friend of mine still . . . Martha Drysdale was Malcolm's daughter. And Malcolm would come by here and he would tattle on my son, Tony, because Tony perhaps was lighting matches in the alley. So Malcolm would come by and tattle.
And he would not pay our son, Tony, his wages unless Tony wrote out a very precise bill, and he had to call himself “Master Anthony Campeau” before he could get paid from Malcolm because Malcolm was trying to teach him to do everything just right. . . Malcolm was quite a character.

DG: Perhaps when we're headed up toward campus some time, Dr. Gurr is interested in the house that Malcolm lived in . . .
…[NOTE by Henry Gurr ZMMQ SiteMaster:
The Malcom Story house, is likely the Bozeman House that youthful Chris Pirsig called “The House With the Funny Roof” To View TWO Photos Of The Malcom Story “Pink House”, Click Here. And AFTER this 18 Small Photos Page comes up, scroll down to the 7th & 8th small photo, and read Text. Click on photo, to see a medium size, Then click again to see largest size. .

DG: I think Ray talks about DeWeese giving him a way of lifestyle he liked as much as anything else.

KC: Yes. Ray had two role models, and they both were artists, and they both enjoyed what they were doing, and they were fulfilled with doing what they were doing rather than going to a job and getting paid for eight hours a day doing something they didn't want to do.

DG: Oh, I've know that feeling over the years. I spent many years doing things I hated in order to pay the rent. Retirement and working on Henry Gurr's website and a separate memoir writing project have proven most fulfilling, in contrast to working seven awful years for Crocker Bank and being put down for not being a “yes man,” despite the fact that I, on several occasions, improved the bank's operations I toiled in.

Newspapers.com Searches of Old Newspapers Help Identify Robert Dennis Gary’s Parents, and Grandparents:

Additional Assistance of Montana State University Library Archives In Finding These Archives, Is Gratefully Acknowledged.

The Montana Std (Butte MT,) 'Sun 28 Jul 1929
Ronald Gary a son of Mr. and Mrs Martin Gary who was graduated from the electrical engineering course at Montana State College in June, left Friday for Chicago, where he will be employed by the Western Electric company. [Ronald Gary was Dennis Gary’s father. ]

Great Falls Tribune. Great Falls, Montana. Sat 15 Jan 1949, Page 4
Treasure State Deaths: Mrs Evelyn Gary
BOZEMAN --- Mrs. Evelyn Corcoran Gary,, 68, wife of Martin A. Gary and native of Gallatin county, died at her home. Mrs Gary was born on a ranch near Gallatin Gateway. She was married in Bozeman, in June 1902 to Gary. With the exception of five years following 1920, when the couple made their home in Livingston [MT], Mrs. Gary had spent her entire life in Gallatin county. In addition to her husband, survivors include three sons, Ronald M. Gary of Gallatin Gateway, Robert E. Gary of Great Falls and William Patrick Gary of Bozeman; three daughters, Josephine Gary of Seattle, Mrs. Herman (Margaret) Laux of Klamath Falls. Ore. and Virginia Gary of Bozeman: and four grandchildren. [Martin A Gary & Evelyn Corcoran Gary, were Dennis Gary’s grandfather, and grandmother. ]

After the Following Link Comes Up, You May See Henry Gurr Newspapers.com Clippings For What Are Believed to Be Mostly Dennis Gary’s Family:
NOTE: The text of the most important of the following clippings, are shown above.

We Are Saddened To Report That Robert Dennis Gary Passed Away In Jan 9, 2020, Likely From Covid19. You May Read About His Life Here => A Robert Dennis Gary Memorial Tribute Page & Autobiography : ALSO PLEASE SEND EMAIL To HenryG__USCA.edu With Your Memories Of Dennis. Click Here.

Links To Additional Reading Related to the Events Described Above:

1) A Student’s Memories of “Mrs.” Professor Sarah Vinke and Her English Department at Montana State College, Bozeman MT (1956-1960)

2) Pirsig Memory, “The Divine Sarah”

3) The Sarah Vinke Biography Resource Page (SVBRP), Having Extended Information About Sarah Vinke’s Life & Times.

4)
Howard Dean, Nemesis to Robert Pirsig while Teaching in the MSC English Department

5) Shirley Luhrsen and Sarah Vinke: Letters to and from Bozeman.

6) “THREATS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT MONTANA STATE COLLEGE” (MSC) This Document, Recreated Below, Is A 1977 Monograph By History Professor Robert G. Dunbar, Montana State College, Which Is Now Montana State University.

7) ” …a "radical" in Gallatin County, Montana, is a little different from a radical somewhere else." The Eleanor Roosevelt Affair.

8) Mr Dennis Gary’s Memories of The Late 1950’s Montana Political Situation:“Ultra Conservatives” +”Senator Joe McCarthy-Ites”,vs “Political Radicals“

9) MSC President Roland R. Renne

10) “Montana; or the End of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.” The Leslie Fiedler essay in the Partisan Review which angered a member of the University of Montana Board of Regents

11) Pirsig, MSC, and Zen, a selection from In the People's Interest, A Centennial History of Montana State University

12) A Brief Biography of Sarah Jennings Vinke, Found in the Burlingame Special Collections, Montana State University Bozeman

13) Sarah Vinke’s Passing [BOZEMAN DAILY CHRONICLE January 31, 1978. From Obituary Page 10.2]

14) MSC Instructor Asks Probe Over Budget Issue [BOZEMAN DAILY CHRONICLE April 4, 1961]

15a) Photos of Faculty, Administrators, and Students at Montana State College: 1956-1960
15b) Further Photos of Faculty, Administrators, and Students at Montana State College: 1956-1960

16) Interview with David Swingle, Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, on Robert Pirsig, ZMM, MSC, and Bozeman, Montana

17) Interview with Kay Campeau, Bozeman, Montana, resident on Robert Pirsig, ZMM, MSC, and Bozeman, Montana

18) 'Click Here, To View 10 Photos Of Dennis Gary’s Laptop Computer “Daily Work Arena” at San Francisco’s Internet Accessible ''H2O Café '.
...Here you may see an additional self portrait of Dennis Gary, created by Dennis himself, using the Camera of his Laptop Computer.
…This Facebook.com Page was created by Charles Pitts, one of Dennis Gary’s good friends in San Francisco. Here you will find a link to Charles Pits own Facebook.com Page, to see a photo of him. Charles is famous because Wall Street Journal wrote a long article about how Charles had an Internet Presence, but no location address, because he lived under a bridge.

By HSG 200305. RevHSG16Nov23.
File = WikiZmmq}RobertDennisGaryMemTributePg&AssmlAutoBiog Hsg11Rpg00Rev2
PrevFile = WikiZmmq}RobertDennisGaryMemTributePg&AssmlAutoBiog Hsg11Rpg00