Bessie K. Monroe
1888 – 1987

Inducted June 7, 2001

When she died in 1987, after almost 70 years of reporting and editing from Hamilton, Bessie Kerlee Monroe was the oldest working journalist in the United States.

Born in 1888 on a pioneer homestead, B.K. learned to read from the newspapers that were plastered to the walls of her cabin. She was a member of the first eighth-grade class at Darby High School and completed one year of high school in Corvallis.

She married Roy Park Monroe in 1907 and lived with him for more than four years in Forest Service cabins. Her sixth child was born in 1920, only months after her husband’s untimely death.

She began her newspaper career as the Twin Bridges correspondent for the Butte Miner in 1917, and that was the full extent of her professional experience when she was left with six mouths to feed. Summoning all of her determined spirit, she convinced Missoulian Editor Martin Hutchens to hire her as the newspaper’s Bitterroot Valley correspondent and filed her Ravalli County reports on the daily mail bus. Two years later, she became the full-time reporter and city editor for the Ravalli Republican. She was also a correspondent for Butte’s Montana Standard.

From 1923 to 1925 she was the lead secretary for the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, and during that time she returned to the Missoulian, where she worked as a correspondent for the next 48 years.

Between 1932 and 1937, B.K. also wrote for, and eventually edited, the Western News, the Democratic rival of the Ravalli Republican. B.K. left the Ravalli Republican in 1940 for 23 years, returning in 1963 when the newspaper was under the leadership of Bob Gilluly.

She became editor of the Ravalli Republican in 1932, and when the local sheriff was accused of murdering a teacher, B.K. landed a spot as an Associated Press correspondent. She wrote for the AP until a stroke nearly took her life in 1968.

Left with partial paralysis after her stroke, B.K. turned her energies to writing historical pieces, finishing off her poetry, and filing weekly columns despite being able to type with only her right hand. She continued to write for almost 20 years, however, until the day before she died in 1987.

In 1954, she was named Woman of the Year by Montana’s Federation of Business and Professional Women.

B.K. entered Valley View Estates Nursing Home in Hamilton in 1971, but she continued to write profusely from there, contributing an average of 40 columns a year to the Ravalli Republican until her death.

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