Making His Mark: O'Conner put the M in UM

By Luke George

On Griz home football game weekends, a 1978 silver and maroon station wagon with a 6-inch bug guard bearing the words “Griz Pride” meanders around Campus Drive like a Bayliner with oars for power.

The white-haired, 83-year-old driver boasts that the wagon’s V-8 actually has plenty of power. Robert Dale O’Conner is a 1949 UM graduate and the University’s game-day parking manager. But there is more to him than the informational signs he puts around the parking lots.

In fact, O’Conner had a hand in the largest UM informational sign of all: the massive M that hangs over campus on Mount Sentinel. He poured the concrete letter on the side of the mountain in 1968.

O’Conner also was present in September when the men’s basketball team cleaned and repainted the M with more than 100 gallons of paint donated by local businesses. He pitched the idea of a new maroon border on the M to President George Dennison and sought donors for the paint, yet he doesn’t seek recognition. He’s just proud to be part of Griz history, he said.

“It’s noteworthy that the basketball team is getting involved with the community,” O’Conner said, adding that the basketball team also was first to put down a new floor in the gym.

Originally from Wallace, Idaho, O’Conner studied at the University of Idaho in the early 1940s before serving several years in the 75th Infantry during World War II. He coached basketball in General Patton’s third army in Heidelberg, Germany, and aspired to get his teaching certificate so he could teach athletes. After arriving in Missoula, he attended UM and earned his teaching certificate, majoring in English, counseling and guidance, and coaching.

“In those years — in the ‘50s — girls weren’t involved in sports, boys used poor grammar and I wanted to teach them good penmanship,” O’Conner said. He got his chance to work with athletes while coaching Little League baseball for the next 48 years.

“Everyone knows him,” said Sioux Goforth, his dentist’s assistant, while waiting for O’Conner to get a partial denture repaired.

A man in the lobby realized who Goforth was talking about and commented: “I thought that was his rig out there,” Pete Hasquet said. “He’s an icon around here.” Hasquet met O’Conner 25 years ago when his wife was a Lady Griz basketball player.

“I could’ve picked anyone to sit on the bench [and coach] with me, but I wanted the 50 years of experience he offers,” Hasquet said, adding that he and O’Conner coached Little League together in 1997 and 1998 when Hasquet’s son played baseball.

From 1950 to 1971, O’Conner was a contractor who built curbs and sidewalks for the county, the city and the University. Some sidewalks around campus still bear O’Conner’s name-and-date stamp, which he laboriously set in the wet concrete. He wishes now that he would’ve put a stamp on the M, but he’s happy just to see it repainted.

While he made his mark with concrete, O’Conner feels coaching may be his ultimate legacy. Whichever it is, the M and the generations of Little Leaguers he coached are reminders of the 58 years and counting O’Conner has played a large part in Missoula.