Mary Sheehy Moe: Missing Emptiness

Terry had always been larger than life: handsome, charismatic, oozing joy and vitality. I first knew him as this flirty-eyed guy on a 10-speed, stopping by to chat with freshman me on the UM Oval. My husband saw his more diligent side, the guy teaching himself guitar through relentless practice in his dorm room.

By the time I graduated, Terry was playing with Mission Mountain Wood Band, the most popular band in Montana. They toured nationally, but they routinely came home to play on Flathead Lake on the Fourth of July.

Terry and the rest of what had become the Montana Band had just finished a concert near the lake. Several of them boarded a private plane, and the pilot thought he’d buzz the crowd for one last thrill. It turned out to be just that. The plane couldn’t clear the mountains beyond the lake and crashed, killing all aboard.

For my husband, early July mornings trigger a similar reminiscence. With the rest of Great Falls, he turned on his radio on July 8, 1967, and reeled at the news: Terry Casey, Danny Ryan, and Bob Fairfull — arguably the three best-known and best-liked athletes in Great Falls — had died the night before in a car accident outside Hinsdale.

They were young men in their 20s, leaving wives and work behind for the weekend to play softball in Plentywood. Danny Ryan supervised city surveying crews for a livelihood, but for him playing fast-pitch was really living. Time after time, tourney after tourney, Danny’s name was among the All-Stars.

Typically, Bob Fairfull’s name was right there with Danny’s. He’d excelled in high school basketball, but baseball was his sport of choice. He’d gone to Whitworth in Spokane on a baseball scholarship, but the pull of Montana and a girl named Judy brought him home. He married Judy in 1960 and now had two little kids and a job as a fireman first-class.

And Terry Casey? Terry was a god in Great Falls, where he was summering before heading off to play hockey in the Winter Olympics. It wasn’t just that he starred in every sport he played. He did everything with class, in and out of the arena. There was no showboating, no cheap shot, no sniveling or taunting. Like the gifted Phineas in “A Separate Peace,” his grace, as an athlete and as a person, was too unusual for rivalry.

Jack Evankovich was behind the wheel that night, sporting a brand-new Ford Galaxie fresh off his dad’s car lot. Only Evankovich left that car alive, the speedometer stuck at 90. A jury later found the fault lay with the vehicle, not the driver. Small comfort.

When you’re young, you can’t believe that lives throbbing with laughter, zest, and talent can be snuffed out so abruptly, so senselessly. I didn’t think I was young when Terry Robinson died. I was a married schoolteacher with three young kids. It’s only now, looking back, that I realize how young I was, how much Terry missed … and how much of him Montana missed. It would have been so fun to watch him grow. My husband feels the same way about the other Terry. And Danny and Bob.

T. S. Eliot said April is the cruelest time. In Montana, statistically it’s the first week of July … and, counterintuitively, the whole month of August. So take care, young Montanans. There’s always so much to miss.