Alexander Warden
1896 – 1973

Inducted June 18, 1998

The son of Oliver S. Warden, also a member of the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame, Alexander Warden was born in Great Falls in 1896. 

He graduated from Great Falls High School in 1914 and the Phillips Exeter Academy in 1915 and then earned an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College in 1919. In World War I, Warden served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy, assigned to the Atlantic Fleet.

Upon his return from the war, Warden became a reporter for the Great Falls Tribune and was working in the sports department when he covered the Dempsey-Gibbons world heavyweight championship fight for the newspaper in Shelby on July 4, 1923.

Warden married Hebe F. Leggat of Butte on Feb. 20, 1923, and they were the parents of three children: a son, Scott, and two daughters, Ashby and Nancy.

Warden became advertising manager of The Tribune in 1929 and was named president and publisher of The Tribune and Leader when his father died in 1951. He owned and published The Tribune until 1965 when the newspaper was sold to the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co.

His public service included time on the board of the State Fair. He also served at various times as director of the First National Bank; the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis representing commerce; the Rotary Club; the Great Falls Concert Association; and Meadow Lark Country Club.

He also served as a director of Western Air Lines, Northwest Bancorporation, Buttrey Foods, Inc., the advisory board of Mountain States Telephone Co., the Salvation Army advisory board, the C.M. Russell Gallery and the College of Great Falls.

He was selected to serve as a member of the University of Montana advisory Council of 50 in an emeritus capacity and was a member of the Western Fair Panel. He was also a member of Sigma Delta Chi (the Society of Professional Journalists), the Shrine Club and the Elks Club.

Warden held a life membership in the Montana Press Association, the forerunner of the Montana Newspaper Association.

The most notable among his numerous positions in public service was his membership on the U.S. Citizens’ Commission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was appointed to the NATO Commission in 1961 by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and attended the commission meeting in Paris later that year.

He died March 7, 1973, in Palm Desert, Calif., 10 days after suffering a heart attack while vacationing there with his wife.

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