John C. Harrison, the longest serving Justice in the history of the Montana Supreme Court, died on Friday morning, November 11th, in Helena, Montana. He was 98 years old. <\/p>\n
A lawyer, judge, and long-time public servant, Judge Harrison was a keen observer of the human condition and concerned with social justice throughout his life. As young welfare worker during the Depression, assisting starving families across rural Montana, he witnessed hardship that, he later recalled, had \u201ca tremendous impact emotionally and politically on me.\u201d In the 1950s, as the Democratic County Attorney in Helena, he often went head-to-head with Wellington D. Rankin, one of the most complex and powerful Republicans in Montana history. \u201cHe wanted somebody\u2026he could control,\u201d Harrison later recalled. \u201cI was not that man.\u201d <\/p>\n
John Conway Harrison was born on April 28, 1913, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the first of three children of Dr. Francis Randall Harrison, a dentist, and Ethel Conway Harrison, a teacher and women\u2019s rights advocate. A family of passionate political beliefs, his father a Republican and his mother a Democrat, they moved eventually to Montana, where Mrs. Harrison became Dean of Women at Montana State College (now University) in Bozeman and Dr. Harrison established a dental practice in Harlowton. <\/p>\n
Judge Harrison said that he became interested in the field of law as a young man because of a judge who sometimes ate across the table from him at a boardinghouse in Harlowton, where he moved with his father in 1928. The judge would flip soup from a spoon and open his mouth just as the soup arrived (and sometimes miss its mark.) But he won young John\u2019s admiration with self-deprecating stories, especially one John later loved to tell in which the town drunk asked the judge, never a well-dressed man, if he was going to the masquerade party in town that weekend. No, the judge replied, I wouldn\u2019t have anything to wear. Well, the drunk said, \u201cyou zip up your pants and put on a fresh tie and I\u2019ll go sober, and they won\u2019t know either one of us.\u201d <\/p>\n
A self-professed late bloomer as a student, John quickly displayed the social enterprise that would characterize his life. At age 15 in Harlowton, already an Eagle Scout, he organized a Boy Scout troop and acted as scoutmaster. He played football and basketball for Harlowton High School, recalling later that basketball games against the town of Judith Gap required extra toughness because of the small church gymnasium, flanked with legions of church ladies who stuck their hatpins into the Harlowton players every time they in-bounded the ball. <\/p>\n
In the fall of 1931, John attended Montana State College in Bozeman where his mother had recently become a dean. He studied agricultural economics and played football for the Bobcats, from 1931 through 1933. He was also on the track team. In 1932 John joined the Beta Rho chapter of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, beginning what was to be an almost 80 year membership as a devoted Sigma Chi. <\/p>\n
In 1935 he enrolled at the University of Montana Law School in Missoula. There he met the love of his life, Virginia Flanagan, a brilliant undergraduate from Great Falls. \u201cShe was so bright she could read the entire book the night before an examination and get an A,\u201d he later recalled. Their courtship was interrupted when John\u2019s injudicious exchange of words with a professor earned him an involuntary \u201csabbatical\u201d from law school at the end of his second year. <\/p>\n
In the summer of 1936, a fraternity brother helped John get a job driving \u201cRed Buses\u201d in Glacier National Park. He was a Gear Jammer the summers of 1936, 1937, 1939 and 1940. John’s love for Glacier continued throughout his lifetime where his family vacationed every summer on Lake McDonald. <\/p>\n
In 1937 John left for Washington, D.C., where he discovered that the best job open to a former president of Montana\u2019s Young Democrats with two years of law school under his belt was inking letters onto the spines of books in the Library of Congress. The following year he was admitted to George Washington University Law School, where he earned top marks and graduated in 1940. <\/p>\n
The U.S. Army called him into active service in September of 1940. In August of 1941, he and Virginia Flanagan were married in Great Falls, Montana. His Army service with the 7th Corp posted him to England in 1943 where he worked on the planning for D-Day Operation Overlord. He followed the 7th Corp through France, Holland and into Germany for V-E Day in 1945, and after the war remained in the Army Reserve, retiring as a full Colonel. <\/p>\n
He and Virginia moved to Helena in 1946, where they raised six children \u2013 Nina, Bob, Molly, Pat, Randy, and Lee. In November of 1960, in what John described as a \u201clandslide victory\u201d of 1,560 votes statewide, he was elected a Justice on the Montana Supreme Court and was re-elected in 1966, 1972, 1978 and 1986. Prior to his 34-year tenure on the Montana Supreme Court, he served as County Attorney for Lewis and Clark County, City Attorney in East Helena, and legal council for the Fort Belknap Tribe. <\/p>\n
Judge Harrison was active in a wide array of national and community organizations. He was elected National President of the American Lung Association in 1967 and was a member of the Helena Kiwanis Club for over 60 years. He loved scouting, serving for more than 20 years as scoutmaster of Troop 108 and for decades on the Montana Boy Scout Council. A strong supporter of Carroll College in Helena, he also spent many years on the school\u2019s President\u2019s Council. <\/p>\n
He is pre-deceased by his first wife, the former Virginia Flanagan, who died in 1984, and by their son Pat Harrison. The Judge\u2019s second wife, the former Ethel Harrison whom he met while she was Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court, died in 1998. <\/p>\n
His survivors include his daughter Nina Harrison (granddaughter Aidan Myhre, great grandsons Andrew Frank and Peter Frank), son Bob Harrison (daughter-in-law Tanya, granddaughter Taryn Harrison), daughter Molly Howard (son-in-law Dr. Raymond Howard), son Randy Harrison (grandchildren Lindsay Harrison, Chase Harrison and John Harrison), daughter Dr. Lee Harrison (son-in-law Dr. Fred Olson, grandsons Chris Olson and Patrick Olson), his sister Betty Bailey, niece Mary Lynn Bailey, and nephew Bob Bailey. <\/p>\n
Known to all as \u201cJudge,\u201d John Harrison not only became a judge and an extraordinary public servant, but also an incomparable storyteller. His enthusiasm for the state of Montana never flagged, from the moment he arrived in 1928. On his desk he kept the words of John Steinbeck: \u201cI\u2019m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition and even some affection. But with Montana, it is love.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Harrison family would like to express their gratitude to Dr. Jay Larson and the staff of the Rocky Mountain Care Center and Hospice of St. Peters for the excellent care provided to John. <\/p>\n
Funeral services will be held at St. Peter\u2019 Episcopal Cathedral 11:00 a.m. Saturday November 19, 2011. A Rite of Committal ceremony with military honors will follow at Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Ft. Harrison. A reception will then be held at the Montana Club at 1:15 p.m. Condolences may be sent to the family by visiting: www.aswfuneralhome.com<\/p>\n","photo":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/505143_profile_pic.jpg","youtube_video_url":"","family_email":"","family_first_name":"","family_last_name":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/case"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenafuneralhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}