McCahons celebrate 50 years

Well, we made it - 50 years.

We met at Carroll College in Helena sometime in 1968 and married Sept. 12, 1970, in Havre at St. Jude's Catholic Church. Dennis had transferred to University of Montana, Missoula, where he earned his forestry and liberals arts bachelor's degrees. Charlotte earned her Bachelor of Arts from Carroll and Master of Science in biochemistry from UM.

Immediately after school, we had the fun job of manning a forest service fire tower at Big Creek Baldy in far northwest Montana. That season was rainy so we spotted only one fire using the alidade.

Dennis is fourth generation - Helena - and Charlotte is third generation - Havre - Montanan.

We reside in Helena, where Dennis was a city-county planner for seven years. He then turned to free-lance art work, writing and consulting. He's written and illustrated several books and booklets. Not finding work in chemistry, Charlotte switched to the technical computer field including coding, systems analysis and wiring. Her last 25 years of work were spent at the Federal Reserve Bank Helena Branch. During her career, she travelled to several cities including Philadelphia, San Francisco and Atlanta. She spent two weeks in Italy and Paris, France, and visited New Orleans with family. Together, Dennis and Charlotte drove to Branson, Missouri, and visited Mount Rushmore and Devil's Tower, Wyoming, along the way.

At home we each got to artistically paint fiber glass theme bears for city promotions, and we painted a 19 by 30 foot outdoor wall mural featuring architectural elements in downtown Helena.

Intentionally, we didn't have any children. There are about 10 reasons why we did not, particularly a belief in zero population growth. We do have rescue cats and dogs. Our common interests include intellectual curiosity, wonder at the natural world, antiques and art, gardening, and refurbishing an old house. We live in an 1890s shingle-style, granite-based mini-mansion, but it is a fixer-upper. There is a large, planted yard with at least 50 species of trees and shrubs including a Kentucky coffee tree, a honey locust, a black walnut, a horse chestnut, a buckeye and two or three oaks. It finally dawned on us that this project will never be finished, but provides a challenge to try. We have a wonderful art collection which includes many bears, other animals and landscapes. We just bought what we liked without any formal curation.

So for the rest of our years, sharing humor, we'll keep on restoring and gardening.

No reception is planned.

Dennis and Charlotte McCahon