I first met Richard Garlough in 1998. He was one of the first features I wrote for the newspaper. He was walking around town and I think I stopped and took his picture, I can’t remember exactly, but he got to telling me his story about how he used to smoke a couple packs of Camels a day, had a heart attack before the age of 60 and had to change his ways after open heart surgery.

That meant a steady diet of salads and chicken and plenty of hiking. Garlough invited me on a hike up West Flattop Mountain in Glacier. It was November and a snowy day.

I remember Garlough and friend Corwyn Wyman tearing up the mountainside, two, three, switchbacks above me while I struggled, sure a lung was going to pop out of my mouth.

That hike led to many more with Wyman and Garlough over the years, along with many other friends.

Garlough and his wife, Suzanne, became good family friends as well and Richard took my autistic son Hunter every Friday afternoon for at least 10 years, maybe more. 

This was back when taking Hunter anywhere was a chore on a good day and misery on a bad day. (To put things in perspective, when Hunter was young, he insisted on carrying an orange. If something happened to the orange, he had a fit. As you might imagine, plenty of oranges went bad, got squished, and all sorts of other things happened to them. 

If that sounds weird, it’s because it is, but that’s autism for you, as a parent, you never really knew what would happen next. Oranges were the least of it.

But Richard took Hunter’s tics in stride and with good humor. They somehow always managed to go to Glacier Park for a hike and then would end up back in Whitefish at McDonald’s for a burger and fries, two of Hunter’s favorite foods.

“Fridays are Richard days,” Hunter would say.

As Hunter grew older Fridays with Richard ended. Richard was now in his twilight years and Hunter was in his late teens. Still, we got together at the holidays and for birthdays and if something broke and I had a question on how to fix it or needed someone to help fix it, Richard was always there to offer advice and the know-how to get a project done.

He was a mechanical genius and could fix just about anything.

On Feb. 9, Richard died from natural causes. He was 85.

Hunter sat through Richard’s funeral mass without a peep, without a fidget, stoic.

I suspect there was a kind spirit at work in the halls of that church, resting a hand on Hunter’s shoulder.

And I can’t thank him enough.