JIM FALL: No fun going to Helena under the circumstances

As you read this today, I am nowhere around.

Nope, nowhere even close.

Fact is I’m probably somewhere between SLC (that’s airport lingo for Salt Lake City) and MCI (ditto for Kansas City) on my way back to Missouri from a hurry-up trip to Helena, Mont., a previous home for more than 13 years.

It has been one of those mixed-feelings kinds of trips.

I am always happy to get back to Montana and visit friends and former professional acquaintances from the time I was executive director of the Montana Newspaper Association. But I was not really ready in any way, shape or form for this trip.

Coming back to a former home is always fun, but when the primary purpose of the trip is to send a dear friend “home,” it takes on a different set of vibrations.

I met William J. Beaman, Col, USAR, soon after we arrived in Helena in the spring of 1995. I must admit I am uncertain now whether it was at church, or otherwise. We both attended St. Peter’s Episcopal Cathedral, and we were both Rotarians, but I honestly can’t recall which first brought us together.

I do know where I saw him last, however. And was quite uncommon for our meetings, I spoke, Bill didn’t.

There were thousands of words said about him, but he was silent Tuesday morning.

Silent forever in this world - a world he had served so very well for the biggest part 66 years.

Bill Beaman was a Montana kind of guy. Not the Marlboro Man kind of cowboy or the Grizzly Adams sort of mountain man that so often comes to mind when Montana is mentioned, but a Grizzly nonetheless. See, every graduate of the University of Montana (that other UofM, I used to tell him – and he’d direct that designation right back at me) is a Grizzly, just like every Mizzou grad is a Tiger.

He earned his first degree from Missoula in business in 1967, and added an MBA in finance in 1972.

With that to his credit, he launched a 28-year career with D.A. Davidson and Company, the Northwest regional brokerage house for which he ended up managing the Helena office.

But Bill was more than a finance guy. He was a soldier. Big time, sure enough, professional class. So much of a soldier, in fact, that the governor issued a directive that all flags in Montana were to be flown at half-staff Tuesday in his honor. So much of a soldier that his full military internment at the cemetery at Fort William Henry Harrison included the traditional riderless horse, complete with boots reversed in the stirrups.

Col. Beaman was a 31-year Army veteran, serving first on active duty and then the Army Reserve. He worked in logistics, and in intelligence, at domestic posts in Washington, D.C., and Minnesota and overseas in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait. A veteran of Vietnam and Desert Storm, he commanded 3,600 soldiers from July 1992 to July 1996. After his retirement, he was a civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army from 2008 until 2010, representing Montana’s soldiers at the highest echelons of military command.

Bill and I served together in Rotary, as I’ve said, and on the governing board of our church, where he was unmatched as treasurer, but we shared other bonds as well.

After I underwent open heart surgery in Missoula in 2004, the first voice I remember hearing was Bill’s. I had been out for about four days and he and his wife, Diane, had stopped by the hospital. And I never let him forget that he had not actually made the 90-mile trip to see me – as he would later try to convince me – but had really just stopped by the hospital after a Grizzly football game.

We laughed together, a lot, and cried when first he lost his wife, and then I lost mine. His understanding was a great comfort during that time and I will never forget it.

Not too long after I moved back to Maryville in 2007, Bill was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoid tumor after falling ill on the eve of running a half marathon. About that same time that he told me he had decided to marry the new love in his life.

That wedding was an event I couldn’t miss, wouldn’t miss, even though it was the same night the highly ranked Missouri Tigers pounded the unequally respected ku jayhawks, at Arrowhead, 36-28. I got a small wooden bear for having traveled the longest distance to Helena that night. Needless to say, that bear means more to me now than ever.

Bill regularly sent heartfelt messages on Veterans Day and I wish I still had the most recent one. I don’t.

But I do have the last lines of his obituary from the newspaper.

“I have fought the good fight.
“I have finished the race.
“I have kept the faith.”

Indeed he did.

I am thankful I can count Billy Beaman among those I have been fortunate enough to know during my time.

I understand no one here knew him like I, but hopefully you will one day – and then you’ll understand why I wanted to introduce you first.

Jim Fall is a local weekly columnist. He is a former publisher of the Maryville Daily Forum.