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The afternoon brought the blessing of a cool breeze that

knocked away the urban mugginess and sent airy seeds of

cottonwood trees dancing through the shade. Thunderheadswere flexing big muscles in the west, promising a drum song,

but for the moment there was other music.

In Losekamp Hall, an impressive four-story pile of hand-

hewn sandstone, somebody was playing a violin, running

through scales and then a difficult melody. The musician

was not yet a master, but somebody was in there trying hard

and making it work, mostly, letting the balm flow from the

windows of one of the signature buildings on the campus ofRocky Mountain College.

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A few steps away I spooked a handful of doves that had been pecking at the ground, making a very different kind

music. Then I found a well-thumbed copy of Shakespeares

Julius Caesar on a pew in an outdoor chapel. The name

inside the cover said Dawn Carter and I left the book there,

pretty certain shed return for it.

Classical music. Shakespeare. Historic stone buildings

surrounding a shady arbor where doves coo. This was aca-

deme. A whole grove of it.Somewhere, I realized, in lonesome prairie graves,

Montana pioneers smiled in satisfaction. Their dream was

still alive.

In fact, its more vigorous than ever.

The story of Rocky Mountain College is really the story

of three colleges, including two that opened their doors long

before Montana was even a state. The first was the Montana

Collegiate Institute at Deer Lodge, which offered its first lec-tures in 1878, when Custer was barely cold in his grave and

just a year after Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce almost made

it to freedom.

Shortly afterward, Montana Wesleyan College began

planting roots in Helena.

In Billings, where Rocky stands today, Billings Polytechnic

Institute literally carved itself from the stone of the nearby

rimrocks in the early years of 20th century, rising from a

muddy beet field to become one of the best-rated small col-

leges in the West.

Since the three institutions became one, Rocky bills itself

as the oldest college in Montana and the oldest continually

operating business. To argue with these assertions would be

quibbling and hair splitting, for Rocky, in one incarnation or

another, has been producing teachers and agronomists, musi-

cians, painters and business leaders for almost 130 years, and

some of those years have been incredibly long ones.

It is an often named and renamed college that has had

many lives, and has looked death in the face more times than

a cat and somehow come away bloodied but alive to fight

another day, former Rocky President Arthur DeRosier wrote

in a 2002 history of Rocky, a book called Courageous Journey,

authored by Lawrence Small, another former president.

Rocky isnt a big place, and if the traffic demands your

attention you could easily drive right past the campus in its

neighborhood on the west side of Billings. Even on a quiet

day, the charms of its campus are insulated from the thor-

73Big Sky Journal

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oughfares by playing fields and parking lots, accouterments

of any modern campus.

Getting a feel for the place means youve got to look a

little closer.

U.S. News and World Report did so and for nine years

has listed Rocky as one of the 10 best comprehensive colleges

in the West. And the same magazine has placed it among the

top 10 in terms of value, where you get the most learning for

your dollar.

Even the neighbors often dont give it much thought.

Michael Mace grew up in nearby Laurel and said he knew

Rocky existed, but it never made much of a blip on his radar

screen and he never thought of attending.I thought that was where the smart kids went, Mace

told me.

Hes right. Smart kids do come here. But the statement

packs a certain irony coming from Mace. Hes now the college

president and the man credited with finally putting Rocky on

firm financial footing.

Students here study a core of liberal arts, honing their

brains in a variety of disciplines; but 86 percent of them

choose professional majors ranging from education to busi-

ness, from aeronautics to equestrian studies to a variety of

sciences. Some even learn to become physicians assistants.

Rocky attracts leading scholars in the study of religion and,

while all sorts of places focus on the study of war, Rocky hosts

an institute dedicated to the study of peace, offering lessons

that range from playground dispute resolution to geopolitics.It even has a national champion ski team, and were not talk-

ing ski bums: Of the 12 people on the team, eight are academic

All-Americans.

Not bad for a campus with just 850 students, making it

smaller than many urban high schools (another 300 or so take

distance learning classes).

So while most of the world just whizzes right by, others

take notice. The student body attracts scholars and striversfrom 35 states and nine foreign countries. Dignitaries who

have trekked to Rocky range from Robert Frost to Bishop

Desmond Tutu.

All of this, right in the middle of Billings.

It might not be the Athens of the West, as early boosters

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had hoped. But Rockys in good shape today. And getting here

was an incredible slog. Money was always tight, and many

presidents spent fitful nights, wondering if theyd be able to

open the doors in the fall. But somehow, they always made

it happen, nursing the school through flu epidemics, tenures

in four different Montana towns, world wars, economic

collapses, the dust bowl years, the Great Depression and

devastating earthquakes. Rockys people always did what it

tookbegging, borrowing and even renting out dormitories

as housing for Italian prisoners of war shipped here to hoethe beet fields that once surrounded this campus. There were

times Rocky couldnt even pay the faculty, but somehow, the

doors stayed open.

The mission began in 1878 in Deer Lodge, best known

today as the home of the state prison, but, at that time savor-

ing a reputation as a more family-oriented community than

the hardscrabble mining and cattle towns around the region

the boozy, brawling towns stitched together fast from canvas

and rough-cut green timber, places that baited in miners and

speculators and gamblers, highwaymen and vigilantes and

whores looking for a quick buck and a quick exit.

Deer Lodge, on the other hand, was built from the outset

by settlers, ranchers and farmers of a Stegnerian mindset who

worked hard and looked forward to church on Sunday, peo-

ple whod planted their feet for the long haul and believed

the best rewards are to be savored at a later time. Many of

these men and women were educated and they knew the

benefits of schooling. They wanted that for their children and

they were planning to be there long enough to see their hopes

come to fruition.

So they started something called the Montana Collegiate

Institute in a vast territory that contained less than 40,000

soulsnot even half the population of modern Billings.

Clearly, those people were optimists, but they also knew

that hope alone doesnt pay much, so they bent to the chore

of building a college, just as they bent to their branding and

planting and threshing.

They werent altogether altruistic, however. Montana

territory contained a smattering of Catholic schools, and

staunch Protestants werent keen on the specter of Romishinfluences.

The plan worked for a while. Brick buildings were

erected, the sagebrush and cactus were cleared from the cam-

pus grounds. Teachers were hired, students arrived, and the

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school moved in fits and starts for several years.Meanwhile, Wesleyan was taking shape in Helena, under

the tutelage of the Methodists.

Both schools faced similar hurdles.

The creation of the states public university system in

1893 drew away both students and faculty, then World War I

erupted and the new military draft took even more students.

Eventually, the Deer Lodge campus was shuttered and the

school merged with Wesleyan in Helena, but the strugglesnever ended there either. Finally, a series of earthquakes in

1935 shattered buildings and drove the school out of town.

Staff and students packed up what they could salvage

and moved it to Great Falls but couldnt muster much support

there, eventually deciding to merge with Billings Polytechnic,

another institution with a history of staggering from one crisis

to another.

But while the challenges were similar, Poly took a dif-

ferent approach. The Deer Lodge and Helena institutions

had relied largely on support from churches and generous

private benefactors, partly in Montana but largely in the East.At Poly, too, campus bosses constantly solicited support,

but when that wasnt enough, people simply rolled up their

sleeves and innovated.

If students couldnt pay tuition, they could work some

of it off. The school owned a sizable irrigated farm that sup-

ported everything from salad greens to sugar beets to wheat.

Students ate what they grew, and the school sold sur-

pluses and seed for cash. For years students milled wheat,creating the popular cereal, Cream of the West, and shipping it

to breakfast tables around the nation. Whenever construction

was on tap, which was often, both men and women students

climbed to the nearby sandstone rimrocksBillings most

famous landmarkquarried stone, hauled it back to campus

and made buildings from it. Their work stands today in the

impressive structures that form the core of the campus.

One of them, Prescott Hall, is as impressive on the inside

as it is on the outside. One of its high-ceilinged, paneled and

book-lined rooms now serves as Maces office.

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This used to be the kitchen, he told me with a grin,

rising from an overstuffed chair to fetch pictures of the early

quarrying work. Behind him, an oversized oil painting by

J.K. Ralston portrays oxen teams muscling overladen wagons

through a creekside bog, the kind of place where it seems the

mud has no bottom.

It was, I thought, a fitting adornment at Rocky: persever-

ance against all odds, families bringing dreams, making plans

to stay and tame a wild land.

Mace, 54, isnt what youd expect to find in the office of

a university president. But he might be exactly what it needs.

Solidly built, intense and friendly, hes a businessman, not an

academic, and he knows he doesnt fit the mold.

He jokingly describes himself as a doorknob salesman,

but that doesnt quite fit. In reality, he invented the key card,

the device that looks like a credit card and unlocks the doors

in hotel rooms. His factories also manufacture doors, door-

jambs and hardware. Check into a modern hotel anywhere

in the country, and theres a 1-in- 4 percent chance youll be

using one of Maces doorknobs.

When asked to assume the role of president late in 2005,

Mace had been on Rockys board for some time. At the time

the school was $430,000 in the red. There were enough rumors

flying around that Mace found it necessary to make a public

announcement that workers would indeed be paid.

Payroll will be met, he wrote in the college magazine,

shortly after he was installed. It always will be met.

By the following June, Rocky was $1.2 million in the

black. Plus, Mace had raised enough money to grow the

schools endowment from $17 million to $24 million, greatly

increasing the amount of scholarship money available.

Yet hes dismissive of his own role.

Theres not much of a story really, he told me. We had aninstitution that was in financial trouble and we turned it around.

This was not done without pain. Some academic majors

will be eliminated. Some staff has been laid off, a decision he


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called heartrending, but Mace said he simply applied the samebusiness principles that made his other companies succeed.

Im really a nontraditional president, he said, a man who

thinks in terms of customers and return on investment.

In academia, he said, sometimes thats a bit threatening.

Perhaps so, but its working, and Mace did the job for

free, almost.

I told them Id take the job for $1 a year, he said.

Now hes planning to stay on for as long as theyll haveme, but said hell start accepting a real salary.

Hes proud of the school and believes in its mission

of training people for careers while basing their education

around a liberal arts core that trains them for life.

And for the first time in its 128-year history, Rocky is on

firm financial footing.

Rocky is at a point where well probably never have to

run a hand-to-mouth existence again, he said. Its always

had a history of financial turmoil. This is the first time weve

been this steady.And thats good news for the school, for the city of

Billings, and for future generations of teachers and artists,

aircraft pilots, racetrack managers and more.

When I left Maces office, a group had started a pickup

baseball game. Somebody connected with a pitch, and the

chink of a metal bat rang across campus, echoing off the

stone buildings and through the leafy cottonwoods.

The violinist in Losekamp Hall had knocked off for theday, and except for the ball game the campus was quiet.

But it was steady.

The pioneers were still smiling.

After living in places as varied as New York City and

South Korea, Scott McMillion returned to Montana in 1988,

where his family has lived for four generations. The author

of Mark of the Grizzly (Falcon Press, 1998), he also is a

regular contributor to newspapers and magazines.

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