By David Erickson
Missoulian
MISSOULA, Moint. — The smell of freshly cut timber and the sound of chainsaws filled the air inside the Schreiber Gym on the University of Montana campus this week as forestry students and alumni have worked furiously to set up the 106th Foresters’ Ball.
The iconic campus tradition, a fundraiser for the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, will be held on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. and is open to the public.
Along with a saloon, a beer garden, a “Cat Can” jail, a “Fireline Fade” barber shop and live music, the event this year will also sound a more somber note.
On the second story of the Schreiber Gym, a room will have plaques to honor the 12 smokejumpers and one ground-based firefighter who perished in the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire north of Helena.
Six of the firefighters were students or former students at UM.
The fire, memorialized in the Norman Maclean book “Young Men and Fire,” led to sweeping changes in the safety and tactics of wildfire suppression.
“It’s just pretty impactful because six of those guys sat in the exact same seats that we sit in,” said Koson Verkler, a senior forestry student at UM, as he stood amid the chaos of construction on Thursday morning.
Verkler is the “chief push” of the Foresters’ Ball Committee this year, meaning he leads the organization of the weeklong build. He also was a member of the 75th Anniversary Remembrance Committee of the Mann Gulch Fire last year.
Visitors will be able to look at the pictures and understand “more about who they were,” Verkler said.
There will also be a replica of the Miss Montana airplane that flew the smokejumpers in along with parachutes displayed at the event.
The theme this year is “Tankers Dumpin’ and Crews a Jumpin’.”
He said the event has already sold a lot of tickets, and he hopes they’ll sell out.
The UM News Service, in a press release about the event, quoted third-generation UM alumnus and Forest Service firefighter Mike Ryan saying his grandfather was on a crew that responded to the aftermath of the fire.
“When you stand at the top of Mann Gulch, you are immediately carried to what it must have been like for those men in those moments,” Ryan told UM News Service. “Even if they are not directly remembered by name, the lessons that came out of Mann Gulch will stay with the firefighting community forever.”
There will also be a Community Forestry Day from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, which is open to the public.
For more information or to get tickets, visit umt.edu/griztix/ and scroll down.
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