Harry LeRoy Billings
1913 - 1990

Inducted June 12, 1997

Harry LeRoy Billings was born on Jan. 30, 1913, in Somers. His parents were Ray O. Billings and Edna B. Gannaway.

Harry was raised in Camas, a small rural community next to Hot Springs, where he attended elementary school. He attended boarding high school in Thompson Falls and graduated with a BA in journalism from Montana State University in Missoula in 1933. His mother acquired a printing plant in 1924 and began to publish the Camas/Hot Springs Exchange, which she edited, published, printed and sold ads for until 1959. She also ran a drug and dry goods store, was postmaster for Camas and had two gas pumps. Harry learned to operate the Linotype, a flatbed hand-feed press and hand-fed job printing presses as a boy.

In the fall of 1933, Harry married Gretchen Garber of Seattle and Plains. Harry and Gretchen returned to Camas/Hot Springs, where he worked briefly on his mother’s newspaper. For much of the remainder of the Depression, Harry and Gretchen moved about the state as Harry worked on survey crews on state and federal projects. They carried their meager belongings in apple boxes that were transformed into furniture when they arrived at job sites. During this time they had three sons: John, Mike and Leon.

Harry and his family returned to Camas/Hot Springs in the late 1930s where Harry again worked on the Camas/Hot Springs Exchange and then for the old Myler Lumber Mill before moving to Tacoma, Wash., to work in Todd Shipyards during World War II. He worked as an assistant naval architect; Gretchen was a ration clerk.

After the war, Harry worked at the Tacoma Labor Advocate while he shopped around Montana to find a newspaper to purchase and operate. Unsuccessful in that effort, he was offered the job as assistant editor of the People’s Voice, a small farmer/labor liberal newspaper published in Helena. Because the People’s Voice was a co-op owned by its members, he could not purchase it. He did receive assurances from the board when he joined the newspaper that he would have complete editorial freedom.

Shortly after joining the People’s Voice, editor H.S. Cab Bruce retired and Harry became editor and manager, a post which he held until Gretchen joined the Voice, first as a bookbinder and then as managing editor and reporter. While the People’s Voice had a printer and a pressman, it was very much a family operation.

The People’s Voice was truly a labor of love and conviction. It never had a solid economic base and frequently the editors would go for weeks without pay. Gretchen spent a great deal of time contacting farmer co-ops for advertising, covering meetings focusing on Native American causes and mental health while Harry sat at his manual typewriter beating our editorials and stories which, as the logo of the newspaper suggested, were intended to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” The Voice spoke out on issues that involved groups with no organized voice, no lobby and no paid spokesperson. It also covered important meetings of farm and labor organizations.

During those years, Harry also served as secretary-treasurer of the Helena Central Labor Council and a de facto member of the resolutions committees of the Montana Farmers Union and the Montana AFL-CIO. He also held offices in his own local Typographical Union.

As a capstone of their career, Harry and Gretchen were awarded the Sydney Hillman Award for outstanding work in the field of liberal journalism in 1958. Their prize included an all-expense-paid trip to New York City.

During his tenure as editor and publisher of the Voice, Billings provided in-depth coverage of politics in Montana which, so long as they were owned by the Anaconda Co., were ignored by most of Montana’s major daily newspapers. The Voice coverage of the legislature was comprehensive and controversial.

Billings created controversy early on as editor of the Voice when he began publishing the voting records of members of the legislature. He fought vigorously for occupational health standards, focusing on silicosis in the mines in Butte, and was one of the state’s first writers on conservation and environmental issues. But, surprisingly, it wasn’t his fights with the Montana Power Co. or the Anaconda Co.that eventually ended his publishing career; it was his vigorous opposition to the Vietnam War. As a result of that opposition, organized labor withdrew key financial support from the Voice. Rather than see the paper die, Billings withdrew as editor and publisher.

A year later, Billings was asked by AFL-CIO President Jim Murray to lead the fight to keep Montana from enacting a sales tax. He did so with characteristic vigor. As a result of his exposing the pro-sales tax campaign as being almost totally financed by Montana’s major industries, including Montana Power and the Anaconda Co., the voters rejected that referendum.

Billings was later asked to become director of education for the Montana AFL-CIO, a job he held until his retirement in 1975.

Harry and Gretchen retired outside of Thompson Falls, where they resided until Harry’s health forced them to move permanently to Arizona. Even in failing health, Harry was a crusader and fighter until the end. In Arizona he worked tirelessly for mobile home owners in their efforts to form an organization, establish a newspaper and a lobby in the legislature for a better deal with the owners of mobile parks.

Harry Billings died on April 25, 1990, at the age of 77.

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