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SigMT Spring 2018

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SiG MT 108 MEMORY L ANE Text by Polly Kolstad • Photography by KC Kreit ven at ninety years of age, Ernie Rutherford still camps out on the Fourth of July with his family. "We all get together along the Blackfoot River, fiy to ninety of us," he says, adding, "we are the older ones now; we so enjoy the younger ones." Ernie and his wife of sixty-six years, Audrey, both grew up in Great Falls. ey have four daughters: Diane, Charlene, Nancy and Jill. ey love our state of Montana, and continue to travel with Ernie at the wheel. Ernie has been retired for thirty-five years which has given him the opportunity to go to the Kentucky Derby at the invitation of his nephew, Lynn Whiting, a trainer for the Breeders Cup. "We have aended the "Back Side" where the barns and horses are." Ernie served in the Navy in WWII enlisting in 1945 when he was eighteen. "I didn't want to be draed." He served on the Pacific front in northern Guam aboard the USS Hollandia. "I went to boot camp in San Diego, then went aboard the USS Hollandia working on deck in supply. Aer the war, we put bunks on our hangar deck and brought 900 personnel back. It was called the "Magic Carpet" bringing personnel off the Pacific islands they were stationed on. ey would pick them up at the U.S. forces office on the Mariana Islands, the deepest trench of the Pacific Ocean. World War II Vet Recalls the Best Life From raising four girls, to thirty years of aending the Kentucky Derby, Ernie Rutherford is no ordinary 90 year-old. E SiG MT 108

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