{"id":12866,"date":"2016-06-26T09:02:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T15:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=12866"},"modified":"2016-06-26T09:02:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T15:02:16","slug":"final-resting-place-for-roger-clawson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/06\/final-resting-place-for-roger-clawson\/","title":{"rendered":"Final resting place for Roger Clawson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"roger<\/a>

Roger Clawson<\/p><\/div>\n

From Sharie Pyke comes word of a fundraising effort to pay for a headstone for the grave of Roger Clawson, a longtime Billings Gazette reporter, columnist and editor and a columnist for the Billings Outpost for 15 years.<\/p>\n

Clawson\u2019s ashes were buried March 29 at Custer Cemetery in his hometown of Custer. Sharie was his longtime friend, partner and caretaker.<\/p>\n

Ed and I were both great admirers of Roger\u2019s prose and of his often contrarian take on life and humanity. When he died last year, each<\/a> of us<\/a> wrote an in memoriam column.<\/p>\n

For the last couple of weeks I have been cleaning out old boxes of Billings Outpost files, and I occasionally run across copies of the paper. Since reading is much more pleasant than cleaning house, I frequently stop to read parts of those old papers.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I ran across a Clawson column that appeared in the Oct. 25, 2000, issue. The piece was a characteristically counter-intuitive take on downtown renovations. \u201cThere\u2019s no magic,\u201d he wrote, \u201cin opening a sushi parlor in a building that was once a bait shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clawson argued that \u201crestorationists\u201d were robbing downtown Billings of its character, or perhaps I should say characters. He mourned the passing of such figures as Calamity Jane, the original Billings character; a blind newsboy who sold papers from a stand at First Avenue North and 27th Street; a pencil vendor who lost both legs trying to hop a freight train during the Great Depression; downtown roller skater Kerry Brekke, whose \u201ctutu was too much for a few\u201d; and the Rev. Amos Mosely, whose Saturday night sermons on Minnesota Avenue were often accompanied by Billings\u2019 original rock star, Chan Romero.<\/p>\n

There was plenty in the column for me\u2014and Outpost advertisers\u2014to disagree with, but the fourth paragraph contained this gem of a sentence: \u201cRestorationists transformed chili parlors, pawnshops and skidrow gin joints into glass and brass fern bars, knickknackeries, bric-a-brackeries, art galleries and boutiques.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man had an ear.<\/p>\n

Sharie says that $110 has been raised toward a goal of $500 to purchase and install a headstone designed by Mike Turley, a Billings artist and stone carver. Donations can be made to the Sharie Pyke\/headstone for Roger Clawson account at Altana Federal Credit Union.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Sharie Pyke comes word of a fundraising effort to pay for a headstone for the grave of Roger Clawson, a longtime Billings Gazette reporter, columnist and editor and a columnist for the Billings Outpost for 15 years. Clawson\u2019s ashes were buried March 29 at Custer Cemetery in his hometown of Custer. Sharie was his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[69,4585],"class_list":["post-12866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-roger-clawson","tag-sharie-pyke","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}