From a Blind Date in 1950, Gehrkes Celebrate 65 Years of Marriage

SEELEY LAKE – William "Willy Bill" Gehrke met his wife Ardyce on a blind date in 1950 at a picnic in Wisconsin. Married 65 years, they raised six children, ran the Stihl dealership in Seeley Lake for 21 years and enjoyed their time during retirement traveling across the country. The Gehrke family invites the community to their Open House Jan. 30 from 1-4 p.m. at the Seeley Lake Senior Center to help them celebrate their anniversary and Willy Bill's 90th birthday.

Because there was no work in Wisconsin, Gehrke moved to Montana in 1947 after serving in the Navy for three years. Family friends, living in Chester, Mont. told him there was plenty of work and not enough people. He bought a 1937 Desoto Car for $800 and drove to Chester with his brother John.

While working in Montana loading lumber on a flatbed trailer on June 9, 1950, the load fell over onto Gehrke and a co-worker. Gehrke suffered multiple cuts on his head as well as an amputated nose.

"It was my mom and dad's Silver Anniversary," said Gehrke. "You know, I should have gone home."

Gehrke moved back to Centuria, Wis. with his family to recover from the accident. While he was there, his cousin Dub Gehrke set him up on the blind date with his girlfriend's best friend, Ardyce. They went to a picnic at St. Croix Falls, Wis.

"I jabbed him in the ribs and I says you lined me up with a 14-year-old kid," said Gehrke. "[Dub] said, 'No, no, no she's 19'. I got in the car, sat down and looked at her and I jabbed him in the ribs, '14-year-old again I say,'" Gehrke laughed and continued, "She really was 19."

When she met Gehrke, Ardyce was working as a seamstress for Boulevard Fox in Minneapolis, Minn. where they made custom dresses.

Although Gehrke returned to Montana for the harvest in the fall, he continued to court Ardyce. He returned to the Midwest and went to work at Montgomery Ward in St Paul, Minn. They would meet every weekend in Wisconsin and sometimes during the week.

Gehrke proposed to Ardyce while driving down the road. He bought her a diamond ring on her birthday, Oct. 9, 1950. They married a little more than two months later on Dec. 24 on 24th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis.

"It was a great big monster church and there [were] five of us in there including the preacher," said Gehrke. "There were no relatives around. We just decided to do it and get it over with."

Despite purchasing 12 lots of white pine in Wisconsin the first year they were married, the Gehrkes returned to Montana in the spring of 1951 since there was still no work in Wisconsin. The first summer they managed a ranch south of the Marias River near Chester. They harvested 40 bushels of wheat from 1,500 acres.

"Ardyce had never been more than 50 miles away from home up to that point," said Gehrke. "She was tickled to death that we were leaving Wisconsin/Minnesota. It was totally different to her. She was wide-eyed and didn't know what was going on. It was such a change for her, from timbered country to the bald headed prairie. She had strange ideas about how things did go including hunting, fishing and camping."

Gehrke continued, "Ardyce really liked it. That's where she really learned how to cook and bake. She was a town girl all of her life. Wisconsin ain't nothing like Montana."

Following their first summer on the ranch, Gehrke started working for contractors in the Chester area and did some contracting himself. He worked with another contractor on the Tiber Dam Reservoir Project doing the concrete work.

They moved from Chester to Lincoln, Mont. where Gehrke's parents lived after moving from Wisconsin. Gehrke worked for Delaney's Saw Mill, fell timber, built spec houses on the side and worked the night shift at the 7up Ranch as a bartender. The packer Harold Barber nicknamed Gehrke "Willy Bill" and it stuck even though he wasn't sure he liked it.

Gehrke said that Ardyce used the expertise she'd learned working at the Luck Bakery when she was young and made wedding cakes for more than 100 people in Montana.

"Knock on wood, I never knocked one over," said Gehrke. "She just did it because she liked to. People would find out she did it and would come to her and show them what they wanted. Some of the cakes were a monster, way up in the air."

When their two oldest children, William and Julie, graduated from the eighth grade in Lincoln, they had to ride the bus east 90 miles one way to high school over Rogers Pass every day.

"I said no they aren't going to do that. I'll go down to Seeley and see what they got down there," said Gehrke.

The Gehrkes moved to Seeley Lake in 1968. They housed 12 high school students from Lincoln, in addition to their six children, in a two-bedroom house so they could go to school in Seeley Lake.

Gehrke worked less than three months at Pyramid Lumber Company on the planer.

"They found out I knew something about machinery because they bent a big shaft on the planer. They had a hard time getting the bearings for it and they didn't have a set there. When they got back I had a new shaft and the keyways cut into it ready to go. The guy looked at me, 'Who did that?' I said, 'I did,' You know how to do that?' 'Yes, I do.' They wanted to keep me after that."

He decided he could not stay because he needed to return to Lincoln to finish the inside of one of the spec houses he was working on. Then he started falling timber for Ralph Skow out of Ovando and then worked logging with Larry Copenhaver.

Ardyce worked full-time raising the family.

"I told her if I'd known she was so full of kids, I never would have married her," said Gehrke and smiled.

Gehrke opened up Willy Bill Sports, the Stihl shop in Seeley Lake, after getting hurt in the woods a couple of times logging. He spoke with a Stihl representative in Missoula that was looking to find a chainsaw dealer in Seeley Lake. Because of Gehrke's work in the Navy on engines, he figured he could handle working on two-stroke chainsaw motors.

Gehrke opened the business with $300 in chainsaw parts, sold Kawasaki motorbikes and other sporting goods. After about two years he got rid of the sporting goods and Kawasakis and strictly dealt with chain saws. When he sold the business 21 years later to Wayne Soss, he had more than $50,000 in parts.

Gehrke remembers starting work at 7:30 a.m. and at 3:30 p.m. looking to see how many more saws he had to work on and counted 28 more saws lined up on his porch that still needed to be fixed. He worked out of his two-stall garage on Spruce Drive by himself.

"It was a tremendous business. I was told by Stihl that I was their 'biggest little dealer in the country," said Gehrke. "I sold more than a hundred saws every year."

Gehrke recalls Peter Stihl, whose father invented the Stihl chainsaw, calling him up to the podium at one of the dealer conventions and said, "Ladies and gentleman. I want you to all know that Bill Gehrke sold every man, woman and child in Seeley Lake a saw this past year."

Gehrke loved working in his shop, attending the dealers meetings across the country with Ardyce and a complete rebuild starting with just the crankshaft and the case. He sold Stihl and six other brands of saws.

"At one time I knew everyone in this town," said Gehrke. "I drew logging guys from Lincoln, Missoula, Kalispell besides all my own here in town."

When he wasn't working in the shop, Gehrke and Ardyce also ran the Missoulian paper delivery route from Clearwater Junction up to Kalispell, Mont.

Besides travelling to dealers' meetings, Gehrke's favorite memories include travelling the country and camping with all their children and their best friends, Maurice and Shirley Mackie. He would stash his $100 bills from the business all winter under his mattress. One summer Ardyce asked if they had any money to join the Mackies on vacation. Gehrke pulled out 46 $100 bills and said, "I guess we can go on vacation." They would camp, visit museums and other national icons across the country. Ardyce also loved to fish with Gehrke and would go out hunting with him.

At age 62, Gehrke retired. He and Ardyce began to travel south in the winters with their fifth wheel. They spent winters in Texas and eight summers in Alaska enjoying hunting and fishing.

When asked how he stayed married for 65 years, Gehrke smiled and said, "I'm tough. I put up with a lot." After laughing he continued, "I think it's kind of a 50/50. We never really had any bad times. We pretty much agreed on everything that needed to be done. Very few times have we ever had any differences."

Gehrke enjoyed Ardyce's cooking and how fun she was to be around.

"I always told her that I don't think we got married. I said she got me loaded up and told me I was married." Ardyce would playfully remind him of their ceremony in the big church. However, he said, "She had no proof" because their wedding certificate was stolen.

Despite seeing a lot of changes in Montana, many of which he does not feel are for the better, Gehrke said, "It's been a long road but a good one."