Time Capsule: Painted rocks donated; Suit settled

The Flathead Courier, January 23, 1986

Painted Rocks donated: Mansfield Center gets land 

The Mansfield Center plot thickened last week with the announcement that the Painted Rocks site on the West Shore near Rollins has been donated to the center. 

According to Bigfork real estate agent Scott Hollinger, who helped negotiate the gift of the 38-acre parcel, the move was not made because of any deadline the site selection committee might be under. The committee discussed Painted Rocks and the two other Lake County sites, Johnson Point north of Polson and Kootenai Lodge on Swan Lake, in a meeting on Jan. 3; a decision was expected then, but Mansfield officials now say it won’t be made until after a meeting in California next month. 

Hollinger said George Piercy, an executive with Standard Oil of New Jersey who currently lives in that state, planned the donation as a memorial to his sister, Clara Piercy Evans, who lived for many years in Lakeside. Hollinger said the donation was the result of a year’s worth of effort, which began when the site selection committee first started looking for a suitable spot to locate the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs … 

From 1984 shooting: Suit against county settled 

The widow of the Polson man killed in a 1984 shootout at the local airport has won a negligence case brought against Lake County. The case was settled out of court last week. 

The settlement, the amount of which attorneys for both sides declined to specify but indicated totaled several hundred thousand dollars, will stand for both the state negligence case brought by Deola Shryock and a federal case planned for February. The federal complaint stated that the civil rights of Harry Lee Shryock Jr. were violated through negligence when he was shot to death in an airplane on Jan. 11, 1984. 

Shryock was killed by David Cameron Keith — now serving time on death row in the state penitentiary on kidnapping and homicide charges — after Keith had fled the scene of a Missoula pharmacy robbery. Keith took a 13-year-old St. Ignatius boy, Billy Crose, hostage en route to Polson, and Shryock exchanged himself for the boy and volunteered to fly Keith out of the area before the shooting started. 

Terry Trieweiler, a Whitefish attorney who represented the plaintiff, said the settlement would never compensate his client for the loss of her husband, and added that the facts supported a charge of negligence to the extent the other side didn’t want the case brought to trial. Legal language in the settlement said there was no evidence of negligence on the part of then=sheriff Glenn Frame or his department. 

Trieweiler, however, said Frame hadn’t allowed his men access to hostage situation training that was available at the time from both the state law enforcement academy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

He said the one deputy in the department with some training wasn’t used in the incident, and neither were tribal officers who had received hostage training. Missoula special weapons and tactics personnel offered their assistance, Trieweiler said, but Frame turned them down … 

Airport standards set for three county fields 

The Lake County Joint Airport Board approved minimum standards to govern the operation of the county’s three airports at its regular meeting last Thursday night, and heard an update on the pre-application being prepared for realignment and paving of the Ronan Airport. 

The minimum standards are required by the Federal Aviation Administration for all airports that are receiving FAA funding, said Ronan Board Representative and City Councilman Joe Brooks, on Monday. The Standards essentially guarantee the quality of treatment for all airport users and outline the duties and requirements of fixed-base operators at the airport. 

“It’s a document that should have been completed some time ago,” Brooks said. 

The board is in the process of renegotiating a contract with Polson fixed-base operator John Stene, Brooks said. He added that letters have been sent out explaining the new standards to everyone who leases a building or property from any of the airports …