G. George Ostrom (Missoula 1950)
Posted: January 22, 2025
Glenn George Ostrom was born in Missoula, MT, on July 24, 1928. He grew up in Montana’s Sanders County during the heart of the Great Depression. He started a newspaper in the sixth grade and lied about his age to get a job fighting fires at the age of 15. George left Flathead County High School at the age of 17 to join the Army and served in the Signal Corps in Germany during the occupation.
George trained with the Missoula smokejumpers in 1950, eventually rising to squadleader and trainer. He jumped five years before a broken leg ended his jumping career. His passion for hiking never subsided. George hiked some 25,000 miles in and around Glacier National Park and wrote three books about his beloved mountains.
George had an illustrious journalism career. Known as “the voice of the Flathead Valley,” he joined the announcing staff at KOFI radio in Kalispell, MT, in 1956. Over the next 60 years, he would also serve as the station’s co-owner, general manager, and news director. In 1974, he bought the Kalispell Weekly News and turned it into the most widely read weekly in Montana. His column for the Hungry Horse News, “Trailwatcher,” won state and national awards. George was inducted into the Montana Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 2004.
His legacy also includes helping write portions of the Wilderness Act of 1964 with U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf, serving as Richard Widmark’s stand-in on the adventure film Red Skies of Montana, writing a children’s book when he was 90, and mastering the piano, trumpet, guitar, ukulele, accordion, and trombone.
George married Iris Ann Wilhelm in Kalispell in 1957. Together they had four children. He considered his family his greatest accomplishment.
“What I’m proudest of is my family,” Ostrom once said. “That’s the thing that means the most to me.”
He passed away on January 1, 2025, at the age of 96.
