Old Missoula

 

 

The following information is gathered from obituaries that appeared in the Missoulian.

 

Alison Merriam Payne

 

SPRINGFIELD, Va. – Alison Merriam Payne died Friday, Aug. 5, 2011, at home in Springfield, Va. She was 91.

 

Alison’s interesting life took her around the world but she kept her love of Montana, especially her hometown of Missoula and Glacier Park, at the top of her heart.

 

She was born in Missoula on April 5, 1920, to University of Montana English professor H.G. Merriam and his wife, Doris Foote Merriam. She grew up on Connell Avenue, picking wildflowers on Mount Sentinel and making frequent trips with her family to Glacier National Park, where she and her brother, Alan, watched the building of the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

 

Sharp and insightful, Alison graduated two years early from Missoula County High School after twice being skipped ahead a grade. She attended Scripps College and the University of Montana and graduated from the University of Oregon magna cum laude in 1940.

 

Alison’s beau, Phil Payne, graduated from the University of Montana School of Journalism and went with his friend and fellow journalist Bill Forbis to Panama to become foreign correspondents. In 1941, Phil proposed marriage by static-filled phone line — through the phone operator, “He says he loves you!” — and H.G. and Doris reluctantly saw Alison off on a Norwegian freighter for Panama City. Alison and Phil were married in Balboa Heights, The Canal Zone, by an army chaplain on Sept. 13, 1941.

 

During World War II Alison worked in Panama for the U.S. Navy while Phil served as an Army infantry officer. With the conflict surrounding the Canal Zone and the impending birth of their first child, Alison decided to return to her parent’s home in Missoula. There she gave birth to a daughter, Lori, in 1945.

 

When the war was over, the young family returned to Panama, where Phil went to work reporting for Time Magazine. Alison and Phil had another daughter, Dana, and a son, Mark. Time-Life brought them back to Washington, D.C., in 1953. Two years later, Time sent them to Buenos Aires, Argentina; then Rome; and finally back to the United States in 1960, to New York, where the family settled in Port Washington, Long Island. Alison and Phil moved to Alexandria, Virginia, in 1976 with Time-Life Books.

 

Alison first volunteered at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, N. Y., and then got a job in the hospital’s communications office. After they moved to Alexandria, Alison was very active in their church, Washington Street United Methodist, where she sang in the choir. She also volunteered at Alexandria Hospital for many years. After she and Phil moved to Greenspring retirement community in Springfield, Alison played in a recorder group and worked as a volunteer.

 

Alison was tall and smart with a dry wit. She was also brave: She defied many of the conventions of her time and took on a life unimaginable to many of her peers. With the family’s international and domestic moves it was Alison who packed and unpacked, settled the kids in school, learned a new language and learned how and where to shop. A great cook, she embraced the cuisine of the region whenever they moved.

 

She wrote to her granddaughter Jessamyn, “I am always homesick for Montana,” and “I always feel more like me, more securely and pleasantly grounded, when I am in the Rocky Mountains.” Jessamyn notes that Alison she was the only person she ever heard say, “shucks” and “drat.”

 

Alison taught her children to be honest and to notice and appreciate everything in the world around them. All her life, she read widely, and she gardened, sewed and loved classical music.

 

Alison was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Phil, in 2003; and her brother, Alan. She is survived by her three children and their spouses, three grandchildren, three great-granddaughters, one great-grandson, six nieces and two nephews.

 

Alison’s family celebrated her life with a memorial service Aug. 13 in Springfield. Memorials can be made to the Hospice organization named Capital Caring.

 

 

Philip W. Payne

 

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Journalist and family man Phil Payne died on Dec. 9, 2003, at Alexandria Hospital in Alexandria, Va. He was 86.

 

Phil was born on May 19, 1917, in Denver, destined to be a journalist. In grade school in Missoula, he and his lifelong friend Bill Forbis acquired a hand press and some type and published a newspaper they called The Tiny Times. In school at the University of Montana in the School of Journalism, they were co-editors of the student newspaper The Kaimin.

 

After they graduated in 1939, Phil and Bill set off in Bill’s Model A for the port of New York, where they planned to book passage on a ship to Europe and fulfill their dream of becoming foreign correspondents. But war had broken out in Europe, and they were turned away. They went south toward Mexico and made their way to Panama, where they eventually became part of the editorial staff of the Panama-American, an English and Spanish language newspaper.

 

From Panama, Phil continued to court Alison Merriam, daughter of UM professor H.G. Merriam and his wife Doris. In 1940, he asked through a long-distance operator on a static-filled line if she would marry him. She said yes. Phil sent Alison a ticket on a Norwegian freighter, and they were married in Panama in 1941.

 

Phil became a stringer for ABC Radio and Time and Life magazines. After Pearl Harbor, Phil spent four years as an officer in the infantry and then went back to Panama. He joined the Time-Life staff and worked for Time-Life the rest of his career.

 

He worked as a correspondent for the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America; as bureau chief of Time-Life in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and then in the bureau in Rome.

 

In 1960, he and Alison and their three children returned to the United States, where he worked at Time-Life headquarters in Rockefeller Center in New York as an editor of Time-Life Books. He edited Time-Life record albums such as “The Swing Era” and Time-Life books series, including “Home Repair.” He moved with that division to Alexandria in 1976 and retired in 1983.

 

Phil is survived by his wife Alison in Alexandria; daughter Lori Neuhaus and John Neuhaus of Portage, Mich.; daughter Dana Payne of Alexandria; son Mark Payne and Nan Brandenberger-Payne of Memphis; brother George F. Turman of Missoula; three grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and nieces and nephews.

 

A memorial service was held in Springfield, Va., on Dec. 15.

 

Memorials can be made to the University of Montana School of Journalism.