Ed Erlandson – Missoulian Editor – WW 2 Vet (Willard School kid)
Edwin J. Erlandson
Edwin J. Erlandson, a resident of Missoula more than 60 years and of Bigfork since 1978. He was born May 2, 1917, to Matt and Jennie Erlandson in Milltown and moved into nearby Missoula a year later. He attended Willard Grade School, Missoula County High School, now Hellgate, and the University of Montana, receiving a B.A. degree in journalism in 1938. He began working for the Missoulian in 1936 as a copy boy while attending UM.
He was sports editor of the Montana Record-Herald in Helena briefly in the fall of 1938, then joined the Missoulian staff as a night police reporter late in 1938. During a 42-year period, he was courthouse reporter, wire editor, city editor and before retirement was executive editor.
In 1941, he entered the service under the draft before Pearl Harbor for a year of training and served more than four years in the infantry, signal corps and air corps, leaving the service as a captain and cryptographic officer for Third Air Force headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
He married Margaret Watkins on May 15, 1945, in Missoula while both were in the service during World War II. She was a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps from Birmingham, Alabama. She died April 19, 1992, in Bigfork of pancreatic cancer.
On Aug. 5, 1994, he married Dorothy Mae Webb of Fortuna, California, in Bigfork. They resided in Bigfork, Fortuna and Mesa, Arizona.
Mr. Erlandson was a past president of the Missoula Tennis Club, the Montana Tennis Association and the Missoula Kiwanis Club.
He was on the MCHS tennis team and on the University of Montana varsity tennis team three years, playing in the Northern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference against Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State and Idaho. He won the men’s tennis title in Missoula in 1949, the Montana open 45 doubles championship with Phil Garlington in 1969 and was runner-up with Bill Jardine in that division in the state tournament in 1970.
He played on several independent basketball teams in Missoula and with the Drew Field All-Stars in Tampa, Florida, during the war. He was on the Modern Business College fast-pitch softball team, which went to the state tournament in Havre in 1936 and played for several other softball teams in Missoula leagues.
While on the Missoulian staff, he spent six months compiling and editing a 178-page Missoulian Centennial Edition covering 100 years of history in Missoula and western Montana. It was completed in August of 1960 and was sent by subscribers to relatives and former Montana residents all over the nation.
After retirement he lived in Bigfork near the bay, spending four winters in Bigfork, three winters in Birmingham, Alabama; seven winters in Corvallis, Oregon, and after the death of his wife, lived with a niece, Mrs. John McCord and her husband, in Flintridge, California during the 1992-93 winter, then spent winters in Fortuna and Mesa, Arizona.
Surviving are his wife, Dorothy Mae; a son, Bradley T. Erlandson, Philomath, Oregon; a daughter, Janna Fox, Ottawa, Canada; a granddaughter, Shannon Fox, Ottawa; and a grandson, Christopher Erlandson, Philomath.
Burial will be in the family plot in the Missoula Cemetary, Missoula, Mt.
The above obituary appeared in the Eureka Times-Standard on Aug. 2, 2009.
Ed Erlandson was the subject of two nice articles which appeared in the Missoulian after his death. Links to these articles appear below:
Western Montana Lives: Ed Erlandson was an unflappable, hard-working editor by Vince Devlin, Oct. 26, 2009.
Ed Erlandson was a calm port in storm: Memories of former Missoulian editor who passed away in July by Evelyn King, Nov 1, 2009.