Keogh 2021 Frontier Days Grand Marshall & Veteran of the Year

The Whitehall Veterans and the Whitehall Chamber of Commerce may have bestowed “Veteran of the Year” and “Grand Marshall” titles on Gerry Keogh, but he should really be “Man of the Year.” Keogh embodies the spirit of Whitehall, of a Montana, of a Veteran, of everything you want someone to be.

Vincent Gerald “Gerry” Keogh was born May 16, 1935 in Bismarck, ND. Gerry went to school through 7th grade 80 miles northwest of Bismarck in a small town called Beulah, which was about the same size as Whitehall. They had no electricity on their ranch, but there was a little vein of coal which they used to do everything including heating water for bathing, washing clothes, to heating the house.

Gerry was homeschooled the first five years as it was during WWII and it was very difficult to find teachers to work at country schools. After the War was over, the school opened. Gerry and his sister (Dorothy Simonson, who passed in 2002) would ride horses to go to 6th and 7th grade. It was enjoyable – the ride was three miles each way. Those winters were mild, but there were a few blustery, snowy days. Luckily, they could put their heads down as the horses knew the way.

In 1948, Paul and Katherine moved their family to Whitehall and bought roughly 16,000 acres on what is today the Fitzgerald Ranch on Whitetail Road, about halfway between Whitehall and Boulder. Gerry and his sister were enrolled at Whitehall Middle School but this time there was a bus that picked them up and dropped them off from home. What an improvement it was! When they moved to Whitehall it was quite an operation as they brought 400 head of cattle and a bunch of horses with them on the train. There was a depot along the Northern Pacific Railway across from what is now the K-Bar and Grill and they drove the cattle from the depot to their ranch north of town.

Gerry graduated from Whitehall High School in 1953. When he wasn’t in school, he participated in the Future Farmers of America (FFA) or was at work on the ranch feeding horses, milking cows, and tending to chickens. After high school Gerry started at college at Montana State College, which is now MSU in Bozeman. He studied agriculture (of course!) but joined the US Army reserves at age 18 and became part of a tank unit of an infantry regiment.

He attended basic training at Fort Ord California, then was shipped off to Camp Hunter- Liggett in the middle of the Mohave Desert. That was a train wreck, as Gerry put it, as it was late summer with temperatures regularly above 110 degrees. It was the first time he had ever taken a shower outside and the water was heated by the sun. It was an 8-year enlistment in the reserves at that time. He spent four summers going to camp with his unit in Yakima, WA and another training deployment in the Mohave Desert; he attended a reserve meeting every week while in college.

Gerry was promoted to Staff Sergeant within four years. Tank repair and battle track operator was his military occupational specialty (MOS).

In March of 1958 Gerry married Marthanne Kneebone of Butte. The two lovebirds met on a blind date in Butte set up by mutual friends. As serendipity would have it, both Gerry and Marthanne were studying at Montana State College at the time. Gerry was a senior and Marthanne was a freshman.

In June ’58 Gerry graduated from college and moved to Pine Ridge, SD where their first two children were born. They moved to Whitehall in 1960 where their third child was born. Gerry was hired by Whitehall High School as an Ag teacher. He worked at the high school for three years during which time they moved to the ranch in 1963 and took up ranching full time. Gerry and his wife sold the ranch to their daughter and son-in-law in 1996, retired, had a contractor build a house and they moved into town.

Sadly, after 63 years of togetherness, Marthanne passed away this year. Gerry still lives in the house he and Marthanne had built in Whitehall and is an active member of the American Legion supporting Whitehall’s veteran community.

Over the years Gerry has supported the community in myriad ways. He continues to serve on a number of boards to include Jefferson Valley Conservation District, Jefferson County Planning Board, Jefferson River Watershed Board, Resource Conservation and Development Board in Butte that covers seven counties and was a Whitehall Town Councilman for 10 years.

I asked Gerry to share some of his memories of WWII. He was in the 1st grade when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th, 1941. He told me he heard about it from the newspaper, but by that time the news was over a week old. What really got to Gerry was the guys coming back with missing limbs or in body bags. A few people he or his parents knew didn’t come home. The whole thing seemed barbaric to him. Even before they had electricity, they had a battery-operated radio with one or two stations in the house that brought in news every weekday about the war. He said it was interesting after the war was over to hear stories from the troops that came home. There were even some people in their predominantly German heritage community that wanted Adolph to win the war. Many in their community were in disbelief when Germany surrendered, and Hitler committed suicide.

Q: Tell me something about yourself that most people don’t know?

A: Oh, my life has been an open book. There’s not much about me that most people don’t know. I know almost everyone that has a 51 license plate.

Q: How has Whitehall changed in your time?

A: The school system has replaced all their building. The old, old gym that sits by itself south of third street on Main Street is where I got my eight grade and high school diplomas in ’49 and ’53. The old high school that was attached was torn down. There was a building where the horseshoe pits are now that housed the heating unit for the building complex. The present football field was a hay field. The present Tia Kober Building sits on what used to be the football field.

There were three major fires on Legion Avenue. The first one was on the East end that housed a hotel, restaurant and drug store. The second fire went from there to the edge of the theater. The third fire went from the west end of the same block that housed a grocery store, the Mint Bar and the old post office by the Masonic Hall.

When the Interstate was built in the early to mid-1960s, traffic in town slowed way down and the only one traffic light in town at Legion and Division came down. It came down unintentionally once before. Partly due to the wind, the light came down on top of a semi-truck and the driver didn’t even know it. The light made it close to Cardwell before it came off.

We got some of our first paved streets in town due to the Interstate being built. Whitehall Street was paved from Legion to the Interstate. That led to more paving. Before that it was easy to get stuck in the dirt streets in the Spring when the permafrost thawed, and the streets turned to mud.

The ranch they owned also owned what is now the Jeffco Sky Park. Back then it was just a hay field irrigated by water out of Delmoe Lake.