Page 21 - TheRussellCatalogue2017

GEOrGE w. “SONNy” TrASk CONSErVATiON
George W. “Sonny” Trask grew up in
Charlie’s west, in the Judith Basin just outside Utica, Montana.
Sonny’s grandfather set out for the West when he was just seventeen. He ran cattle in the Judith Basin and, after getting married, arranged to purchase Jake Hoover’s cabin and to homestead the land around it.
Jake Hoover was a local
LErOy STrANd
1919–2016
prESErVATiON
Oswald Leroy Strand
was born on January 29, 1919, to Oswald B. and Maude Peshak Strand on a farm near Manly, Iowa. Later, the family moved into Manly
and then to Plymouth, Iowa. He graduated as valedictorian in 1936 from Plymouth High School.
He spent his entire lifetime working with and around cattle and horses. In 1940, he became a partner with his father in the Oswald
ranch – Russell was too busy drawing to keep watch of the sheep. Charlie and Jake spent two years living in Hoover’s one room cabin and many people credit Russell’s knowledge of animal anatomy, which made his paintings and sculptures so realistic, to the time he spent with Hoover. In 1963, Sonny’s father rebuilt the Hover Cabin with help from the Utica Historical Society.
Before the sale of the land and cabin between Trask and Hoover was nal, Charlie and Jake built a cabin for the Trask family to live in. e walls inside the log home were at and Charlie had decorated them with a number of charcoal sketches. Unfortunately, the rst task Sonny’s grandmother took on when she moved into the cabin was to whitewash all the walls to cover Charlie’s drawings.
Despite extensive research over the years, Sonny learned it wasn’t possible to restore Russell’s charcoal drawings from beneath the whitewash.
Sonny grew up surrounded by the rich history of Charlie Russell and Jake Hoover. He raised three kids and had a storied career working on ranches, for the Great Northern Railroad, helping build the Yellowtail Dam, spending
10-2 years working for Fergus County, and working for the Montana Department of Transportation. He and his wife, Dorothy, moved to the mountains after retiring and built a house near the Hoover Cabin and his father’s house that Charlie and Jake helped build. Sonny and Dorothy continue to maintain the Hoover Cabin in their spare time.
“Today, the 35 acres along with my house, and the two cabins, are near and dear to my heart and I plan to spend every summer there as long as I live.”
Strand & Son livestock business in Manly, where large cattle auctions were held annually for many years. In 1944, Leroy entered a partnership with his parents and brother in purchasing a cattle ranch near Geyser, and he became sole owner of the Strand Ranch in 1964. Leroy operated and managed the ranch until 1998.
In 1997, Leroy and Claris Strand established the Geyser Public School Strand Scholarship and have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to graduates of Geyser High School to further their educations.
Leroy Strand has been a generous supporter of the C.M. Russell Museum for over twenty years. He and his wife, Claris donated sixty Jay Contway bronze sculptures to the museum’s permanent collection in 1994, and most recently, the museum is fortunate to be the bene ciary of Leroy’s extensive art collection of close to 300 works. We are honored to exhibit such an impressive collection of artwork from a thoughtful and extraordinary collector.
At the age of eighty, Leroy ne-tuned his skills on the computer to write his book From the Shellrock to the Highwoods, which was published in 2000. Leroy Strand passed away in August 2016 at the age of ninety-seven.
trapper who took Charlie Russell on as an apprentice after being red from a sheep