Dr. Lester F. Howard

Lester Fenton Howard was born in Great Falls in 1919 and graduated from Great Falls High School in 1937, in the same class as Jack Throckmorton. He went on to the University of Montana and Carroll College, trained as an osteopathic physician at Kirksville, Missouri, and married Louise Burgmaier of Power there in 1942. He came home in February 1946 and practiced in Great Falls for forty years.

He was soon on the hill. In January 1947 he chaired the ski club's Ski Week, and he was already an active skier and on the regular ski patrol. On January 22 the club named him head of the Great Falls ski patrol. That December, when the National Ski Patrol gave the club's patrol charge of the Kings Hill runs, he was its leader. In February 1948 the National Ski Patrol made him a section chief, advising the patrol leaders of five counties, and that December its trustees appointed him to the national patrol.

Through his efforts two of the club's toboggans got brakes, to bring hurt skiers down to the lodge. In the winter of 1949-50 he and Harlan Cory designed and built a ski ambulance for the patrol, and they called it the doodlebug. He taught the patrol its first aid for more than twenty years and was still its first-aid adviser in 1970.

He also carried a camera. His picture of Harry Birkenbuel throwing up powder at Kings Hill was the cover of the Tribune's Montana Parade in January 1960 and won the Great Falls Camera Club's contest that month. He retired in June 1986, the last osteopath practicing in Great Falls, and died that October.