30 YEARS AGO • DECEMBER 10, 1992

OVER THE YEARS THE HEATERS TRANSPORTED LOTS OF KIDS

All school buses are yellow, aren’t they? Fifty-seven years ago, it wasn’t necessarily so.

Thompson Falls’ first school bus was red.

In 1935 when Thompson Falls Ford dealer Perry Heater and his brother Orie won the bid for the Eddy Flats and Thompson River school bus run, “No one had established yellow as the national bus color,” Perry’s son Richard laughed.

Three generations of youngsters rode the Heater family buses. Although Richard and Doris Heater retired last summer, the school buses still run from their original location, the Heater’s old Ford garage (now a parking lot on the corner of Main Street and Fulton Street).

The Heaters are pioneer stock in the Falls area. Rich was born here. Rich’s grandfather, Perry Heater was a Sanders County sheriff and later, a county commissioner.

His mother helped extinguish the fires on their Larchwood homestead roof during the 1910 forest fires.

Larchwood, Doris says, was the first of the three settlements now known as Trout Creek. Doris is also a native of Thompson Falls. Well almost. Actually, Doris was born in Missoula, but some of her family homesteaded Larchwood in 1902.

Richard’s father and grandfather started the automobile dealership in Thompson Falls in 1919. At first, the Heaters sold any and all makes. In 1921, the Heaters were restricted to one make of auto. The Ford dealership was the result.

The Model T’s were brought to the Falls by rail, unassembled. “We had to assemble the cars and drive them away from the railroad station,” Rich recalls.

In 1935, Rich’s dad and uncle acquired the Eddy Flats school bus route and a red school bus – a Ford, naturally.

Doris remembers the new school bus. “We all went over to look at it. It was pretty exciting.”

The eastern route was about all that was required in those days. “High school students from the west, Whitepine Creek, Beaver Creek and Trout Creek stayed in the school dormitories,” Doris noted. At least one student came from Murray, Idaho, Rich remembers.

“Board at the dorms,” Doris says “was $12.00 to $18.00 a month. Meals were 18 cents. The cook was Harry Racicot, the grandfather of Montana Governor Marc Racicot.

Rich didn’t get too involved with the bus business until well after World War II. He does remember a few trips he made with his dad and uncle. And he remembers the bus’s heating system. “We didn’t have hot water heat then. The heater consisted of the exhaust pipe encased in a shroud and routed through the floor of the bus.”

Rich graduated from high school in 1940 and Doris Larson graduated two years later. After Pearl Harbor, Rich joined the Navy.

In April 1943, Rich was on his way to Thompson Falls via train from Minnesota where he was being trained for the Navy. He and Doris were getting married.

“It was all arranged. The sheriff bought the marriage license, and the minister married the young couple at the old jail. Doris laughed. “That sounds bad. But I lived at the old jail for 20 years.”

Doris’ father, a former game warden, took the position of under sheriff in 1933 and he was the sheriff in 1943.

Rich returned to his employment at the Montana Power Company after the war. “It was a good job and paid very well,” Rich said.

“I didn’t expect to return to Thompson Falls and I didn’t want to,” Doris said. So, moving to Montana Power’s Hauser Lake facility suited the young couple.

The Heaters only returned because of Doris’s mother’s ill health. “I’m very glad we did, now, “Doris says. “It really is a great place to live and raise children.”

The Heaters raised three children in Thompson Falls. They are proud of all of them, Richard, Don and Sandy.

Although Rich occasionally drove the buses on activity runs, he didn’t take over until 1953, when he and Doris bought into the business.

Ill health forced Rich’s uncle to retire before Rich’s father was ready to quit. For the next 39 years, Rich bought buses, worked on buses and drove buses.

To be continued