Remembering Montana | Mystery Photo
Fall 2026
Come back soon to learn more about this Mystery Photo...
Fall 2025
Readers identified Grizzly football players and a celebrated Missoula broadcaster on the practice field where Washington-Grizzly stadium now stands, circa late 1970s. On the far left is Mike Roban from Great Falls, quarterback for the Grizzly football team in 1977. On the far right is Gene Peterson, who owned KYLT/KZQQ, the station known as the “Voice of the Grizzlies.”
In the foreground is Murray Pierce, an offensive lineman for the Grizzlies from 1974 to 1978. Pierce, from Cincinnati, Ohio, was one of 11 Black football players recruited from Ohio's all-state high school teams to play for the Grizzlies.
Together with the late Ulysses Doss, founder of UM's African-American Studies Program, Pierce found community through UM's Black Student Union. He has served with Missoula County Youth Courts for nearly 30 years and co-founded the Montana Black Collective, a premier Black-owned and operated grassroots organization focused on social justice and activism in Missoula. He served as special assistant to the vice president for student affairs at UM from 2008 to 2024.
This photo was likely taken to promote fundraising efforts to build a new stadium during the "Extending a Tradition of Excellence" campaign in the 1980s. Passionate donors rallied to pledge nearly $1 million by early 1985, and the stadium opened for the 1986 season.
Fall 2024
Readers identified a summer class for music teachers, designed to encourage children to view art as multi-dimensional. The teachers, from left to right, are: Loretta Day from Stanford; Gwyn Hamel from Trego; Janet McCall from Missoula; Diane McMillan from Troy; and Mary Hanson from Glasgow. The photo was featured in a 1973 issue of the Tobacco Valley News.
Fall 2023
Readers identified UM drama students performing a production of “Yes, My Darling Daughter” in the Masquer Theater, circa 1966. The play was the senior directing project UM student Al Holt completed to earn his bachelor’s in theater. Identified actors include fellow students Sharon Strobel, Paul Anderson and Barbara Trott ‘69 (seated) and Jan Swarthout and J. Duncan Crump ‘69 (standing).
Among the readers who wrote in to identify the photo were J. Duncan Crump ‘69 (standing, right) and Barbara Trott Crump '69 (seated, far right). The Crumps, of Olympia, Wash., met in theater rehearsals in 1964 and went on to have a long career together — in many other theater productions and in love. Now married 56 years, they recalled with fondness the time they spent under the tutelage of revered UM professor and founder of the Masquer Theater, Montana Repertory Theater and the Big Fork Playhouse, Bo Brown. They shared their mutual love of their time in the drama department and the lifelong friendships they forged at UM.
Fall 2022
Readers identified UM law student J. Martin Burke examining former UM economics professor Tom Power during a mock trial in a trial advocacy course, circa 1974. After graduating, Burke served as a professor and dean at the University of Montana law school. Identified jurors include Randy Gray, Ted Mizner, Brian Sullivan, Chris Swartley, Richard Gebhardt, Dick Weber, Maxon Davis, Hon. Donald W. Molloy, Mick Taleff and Randi Hood.
Cory O'Neill, a tax lawyer and alum of the Alexander Blewett III School of Law, wrote, "To this day, I still remember Professor Burke as the best professor I ever had.”
Bob Jovick of Livingston wrote, "Professor Burke appears to be propounding a case-winning question to the witness, 'Isn’t it true, Mr. Nascar, that you were drag racing your car at over 95 miles per hour when you ran over my client’s pet pedigree blue ribbon-winning dachshund?' He is holding a document as if it were important, but it was actually a summary for Professor Russoff’s tax class of capital gains tax strategies for alligator farms."