Ed Kemmick

Ed Kemmick has been a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist since 1980. Except for four years in his home state of Minnesota, he has spent his entire journalism career in Montana, working in Missoula, Anaconda, Butte and Billings. "The Big Sky, By and By," a collection of some of his newspaper stories and columns, plus a few essays and one short story, was published in 2011.

Recent Posts

Absarokee woman unearths mother’s story of survival

By: |
Postcard

Before her mother’s death in 1995, Angelica Osborne knew only a few things about her mother’s life in World War II-era Germany, before she married an American soldier and came to the United States. She knew that her mother, Margit Chinkes, had spent time in two Nazi concentration camps as a teenager. Her mother had also talked about how she might have died of starvation if the commander of one camp, whose office she cleaned, had not left her a slice of bread in his desk drawer every day. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Angelica Osborne, Farcountry Press, Holocaust, Nazi Germany

Big gift from BNSF marks start of Crow Native Days

By: |
Gifts

CROW AGENCY — Crow Native Days got off to a good start on a beautiful summer solstice morning Wednesday, with several hundred people attending a prayer breakfast in the Crow Tribe’s multipurpose building. The morning got even better when representatives of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway presented a $75,000 check to the tribe—with a promise of another $75,000 to come—toward the building of a new dance arbor. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Alvin Not Afraid Jr., Andrew Johnsen, BNSF Railway, Chris Howell, Crow Tribe, Noel Two Leggins

Rare Ghost Dance artifacts on display at county museum

By: |
Bull

The centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Yellowstone County Museum is a Ghost Dance shirt made for a son of Sitting Bull, but Kathy Barton’s favorite piece in the exhibit is a pair of Arapaho moccasins. Barton, the museum’s curator, said the soles of the moccasins are clearly marked with a series of horizontal scratches, vivid testimony to the side-to-side shuffling motion that marked Ghost Dance ceremonies. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Culture, Montana, Ghost Dance, Kathy Barton, Larry Williams, Matthew Fesmire, Yellowstone County Museum

Update: Last-minute filings make for crowded city election

By: |
Hall

Update: Seven more candidates filed Monday afternoon to run for the Billings City Council, making this the most crowded city election in nearly 20 years, maybe longer. With the filing officially closed as of 5 p.m., there are now 26 candidates vying for the mayor’s position and five open seats on the City Council. According to records on the Yellowstone County Elections Office website, that eclipses the number of candidates in any city race going back to 1999, the earliest year for which results are posted. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, News, Bret Rutherford, City Council, Mayor Tom Hanel

Red Lodge Songwriters Festival enters 2nd year with expansion

By: |
Weiters

Mike Booth and Cory Johnson started the Red Lodge Songwriters Festival last year, hoping it would become an annual event that got bigger every year. It looks like they’re on the right track. The second annual festival starts next Thursday, June 22, and this year will feature two members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, with 12 shows at six Red Lodge venues scheduled during the three-day event. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Culture, Diversions, Montana, Brice Long, Cory Johnson, Even Stevens, Hugh Prestwood, James Dean Hicks

With clock ticking, Korean War vet to finally get his Jeep

By: |
Jeep

Jerry Scherer, a veteran of Korea and Vietnam who retired from the Marine Corps as a master sergeant in 1968, turns 87 next week. He was a mechanic all his life, and a couple of years after his wife died nearly 20 years ago, he bought a 1945 Willys Army Jeep from a friend, thinking he could keep busy restoring it. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, News, Chosin Reservoir, Jerry Scherer, Korean War, Magic City 4x4 Club, Vernon Ball

Missoula Current overhauls website, marks success

By: |

We are happy to report that our partners in Western Montana, the people behind Missoula Current, are announcing all kinds of good news. In a column by founding editor Martin Kidston, we learn that Missoula Current has launched “a new and enhanced webpage offering a greater variety of stories, images and video.” It was already a good website, but now it’s even better, and easier to navigate. And like the website you’re reading at the moment, it is free of the clutter and maddening distractions one has to endure to read news stories just about anywhere else. Kidston also had this to say: “Last month—in what marked a new Missoula Current milestone—more than 60,000 unique readers logged on for a combined 104,000 pageviews. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Martin Kidston, Missoula Current

First Time for Everything: A belated visit to Bannack

By: |
Masons

How I missed visiting Bannack for all these years I can’t really say. I spent four years in Butte and Anaconda in the early 1980s, during which time I did manage to explore Virginia City and Nevada City, those two other early gold camps, but somehow I never got to Bannack. Blame it on my youth and my heedlessness, and the fact that I had a young child at home. I was also nearly always broke and the owner of unreliable cars. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Diversions, Montana, Bannack, Fish Wildlife and Parks, John Phillips, Sidney Edgerton, Virginia City

Prairie Lights: Should we just scrap judicial elections?

By: |
Ed

Yellowstone County District Court Judge Russell Fagg, as you may know, has an occasional column, “Ask the Judge,” in the Billings Gazette. I wasn’t sure it would be appropriate for me to pose a question through the Gazette, so I called Fagg directly the other day and asked him why he was retiring from the bench this fall, roughly 15 months before his latest six-year term ends. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Prairie Lights, G. Todd Baugh, Gregory Todd, Ingrid Gustafson, Judicial Nomination Commission, Karla Gray, Mary Jane Knisely, Michael Moses