Rose Gordon’s Newspaper Contributions
I’m in the midst of getting ready for the Western Literature Association conference coming up this week. I’ll be presenting a paper on Rose Gordon’s contributions to the White Sulphur Springs newspaper, the Meagher County News. Rose wrote letters and columns for the paper from the 1940s until her death in 1968.
Rose’s newspaper contributions fall into three categories, one) memorial tributes to recently deceased members of the community, which varied in length from a few lines to several columns; two) columns published as “Rose Gordon’s Recollections,” or alternately, after Montana’s Centennial celebration in 1964, “Centennial Notes,” both of which contained a mixture of autobiography and local history; third) letters that commented directly on current politics and social issues.
Her particular specialty was the memorial tribute, examples of which appeared frequently in the Meagher County News, and which was a genre of writing well-suited to her interests and strengths as a writer. The tributes allowed her to combine her interest in local history with her talent for personal narrative, as most of the tributes involve an overview of the individual’s contribution to the WSS community as well as Gordon’s narration of her personal memories of the deceased. She was also democratic in her choice of subjects, writing memorials for both the town’s prominent and lesser known citizens. Even with the town’s prominent citizens, in addition to acknowledging their public record she also is careful to include the anecdote of everyday life. In her tribute to Bide Edwards, she acknowledges his public role as “county commissioner and mayor of the city for many years,” but the greater emphasis is placed on a more homely public service: “Our winters were bitter cold years ago and Mr. Edwards always did his best to see that all had coal and would leave a little extra in his wagon in case of emergency at night so people could get coal” (MCN, January 20, 1965).
A typical example is an undated memorial to Mrs. Lavina Bandel. This comes from Gordon’s scrapbook, and was likely published sometime in the 1940s:
“I want to pay tribute to Mrs. Lavina Bandel.
I well remember the first time I met her. She was a charming young lady, full of life and very pleasant. She possessed stability and inner poise. Everything she did was done well. She often spoke of her childhood days, saying she was taught to be obedient, and above all to finish every duty she took part in. She married Mr. Eugene Bandel many years ago; she was a wonderful wife and real helpmate.
I will miss her very much. She was a kind neighbor. When I was planting my front yard, she gave me lilac bushes, golden glow and many other plants. They will be living memories of her. She was a great lover of nature.
Her son Theodore lives in California. He will always hold fond memories of his wonderful mother and may her memory lead him in the path of destination she had always dreamed of for him.”
Service to others, whether to family members or the community as a whole, is the quality that Rose most often mentions, especially in terms of the little kindnesses that are easily forgotten. Rose also celebrates the homely and the everyday, and she does so through personal anecdotes that reveal something about the personality of the deceased, that “she was a great lover of nature” who also shared the natural beauty that she loved with her neighbors.
