Clack family tours Clack Museum

Editor’s note: This corrects the name of the owner of Anderson Wholesale

Descendants of the Havre icons for whom the county museum is named toured the museum and other attractions Wednesday, ending with a tour of the building being remodeled into the future permanent home of the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum which reveived high praise from the visitors.

"This is going to be a phenomenal place," said Clack grandson Turner Askew.

The day started with Clack museum manager Emily Mayer giving grandchildren of the Clacks, along with their spouses, tours of the museum in the Holiday Village Mall, the Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump on the bluff north of the mall, the former museum home on the Great Northern Fairgrounds along with other museum artifacts there including the Faber Schoolhouse and the Homestead Shack. The visitors highly praised Mayer's work as manager and tour guide.

The visitors then toured the future home of the museum, in the former Anderson Wholesale Building that houses Grigg's Printing, followed by a reception.

A history of history

The grandchildren and their spouses, which included Charles and Anna Askew, Margaret Askew, Catherine Chatalas and Cynthia Spangler, came from Whitefish, Seattle and Memphis, Tennessee, to tour the museum sites, in which their family has been involved from the very start.

Hill County took over operation of the museum, which had been operated by the Havre Jaycees, in the 1960s. With Turner Clack leaving a bequest for the museum in his will, it was named in honor of his father as the H. Earl Clack Museum. The foundation that supports the museum added the name of H. Earl Clack's wife, Margaret Turner Clack.

The two were prominent members and supporters of the Havre community almost from its start. H. Earl Clack joined an older sister in Havre in 1903, before he turned 18 years old, the local history "Grits, Guts and Gusto" reports. That same year, he married Margaret Turner, daughter of a Baltimore doctor.

He started work as a hod carrier, "Grits" says, working for bricklayers building a new school, but soon he started his own business in freight, expanded to open the first grain elevator in northern Montana and soon had a chain of elevators. He then expanded into the petroleum business at first as an agent for an oil company then developing his own business. Throughout his career, Clack opened chains of service stations, stores and hotels and owned housing units in many cities.

The two also were extremely active in Havre society and earned reputations as philanthropists.

The Clack family has been a strong supporter of the county museum since it started.

Finding a location

The work on the Griggs Printing location to house the museum is the latest in a series of moves.

The museum originally was housed in a building on the Hill County Fairgrounds, now the Great Northern Fairgrounds, until the mid-1990s. The museum then moved into the former Havre post office, calling it the Havre Heritage Center.

The funding source for the purchase of the post office failed to produce enough revenue, and with a combination of the final balloon payment and work needed on the building taking its toll, the museum moved to a location in the Holiday Village Mall early last decade, later moving to the other end of the mall to its present location.

The board and foundation have been looking for a permanent space ever since, and in 2013 purchased the building housing Griggs Printing with the understanding that the business could operate in the building was long as the owners desired.

The building itself has an extensive history, built in the 1920s or earlier and housed a dairy as well as the catalog showroom Anderson Wholesale before Griggs Printing opened there some 30 years ago.

Spangler said the location is perfect for the Clack museum.

"I think this is one of the most fabulous buildings," she said. "It's got great bones and history itself. You're putting history inside history."

Touring the new history center

The group was greeted when they went into the building with a piece of family history themselves, a piano that once belonged to Margaret Turner Clack, given to her by her husband. Catherine Chatalas recently had it worked on and regulated by a professional technician and donated it to the museum.

"She decided this is a great home for it," Charles Askew said.

H. Earl and Margaret Turner Clack Memorial Museum Foundation President Elaine Morse gave a tour of the facilities, using the original freight elevator to transport the visitors to the basement and the upstairs.

She described the work that has gone into the building so far, including transporting museum holdings from storage around town and in the county, including from the Hill County Courthouse Annex, the basement of the Holiday Village Mall and the fairgrounds.

Other work has been cleaning out the items stored in the building - Morse said football players were a great help in that - repairing brickwork, tearing out walls, closing staircases and cleaning. Morse at one point said that, after removing some racy posters, the volunteers found blocked off windows they didn't know were there. The group has also been making plans on what would go where in the museum.

She said she also was introduced by Jim and Bonita Griggs to a long-time resident - George the ghost.

She said Jim Griggs said George is harmless - but he wouldn't go in the basement.

Morse said that could be part of a fundraiser - "Come see Geoge" - but she added she thinks the ghost isn't George, but probably Joe. Joe Anderson of Anderson Wholesale.

She said the future museum itself could be a perfect location for fundraising events, such as a Christmas party on the second floor.

Strong praise for location and board

The visitors had nothing but praise for the location and the work.

"It's wonderful," Margaret Askew said, pointing out that she was wearing a Clack museum T-shirt sporting a Great Northern Railway car, one of two she bought while the museum still was on the fairgrounds. "I wear it with great pride. I loved the Great Northern and loved our grandparents."

Chatalas said she is thrilled with the building.

"Oh, I love the possibilities," she said. "I think it's going to be great. I had no idea it was this large."

Turner Askew praised the work done so far.

"It's starting to look like something, and people are going to say, 'What's going on there?'" he said. "... This board has the will. They're excited, and it's going to happen."