The news of Barb Strate’s passing traveled quickly to Salt Lake City and I find myself sadder than expected about a woman I did not know well, but — like most of Bigfork — knew a great deal about.

For two years, I had the good fortune to get to know “Miss Barb” while I was the editor of the Eagle and I count the many hours she spent chatting with me and my staff as some of the most interesting of my time there.

I have often joked since leaving Bigfork that an octogenarian British columnist was the paper’s best-read writer. And though initially skeptical about where the disjointed biography of a reluctant Montanan fit in a local paper, I was won over by the story of a blossoming English dancer and the American soldier that brought her back to the mountains of Montana that I so loved.

I knew through her words that she initially saw those mountains as a fence holding her in, but with a typically British stiff upper lip persevered until the Big Sky opened up and led her down what must’ve been the most unlikely life her teenage self could’ve imagined during the dark days of the London Blitz.

Miss Barb wrote often of her younger years, dancing in the theaters of World War II London, growing up in the grime of industrialized England and, eventually, moving to the Bitterroot Valley with her much-loved husband Sherman. But despite assertions and insinuations about her talent and youthful glow, it remained difficult to picture the Bigfork senior citizen as anything but.

Until one day, she brought an old album to the office with photographs from a modeling job she’d done for a fashion magazine. She was, quite simply, stunning. A stop-in-your-tracks, put-you-in-a-glamour-magazine beauty.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t read her life story differently after that. No longer the recollections of a grandmother, her column every other week was now the tale of a London starlet dropped into the Wild West of Norman Maclean and A.B. Guthrie.

A local newspaper can leave a young writer wanting for something more when it comes to “contributions” in the grand sense. Worthy though they may be, one can only write about the Bigfork Elves so often before he questions whether the work “matters.” One day Miss Barb was regaling with us a story about that week’s column when I suggested that she write an autobiography of her one-of-a-kind life.

She cocked her head in disbelief, paused and said, “I have been.”

Playing a small part in telling her story remains among my proudest accomplishments. Fare well, Miss Barb, and thank you for sharing your story with us.

Alex Strickland,

Salt Lake City, Utah

Managing Editor, Bigfork Eagle, 2007-09