Bud Cheff, Sr.
by Vince Devlin of The Missoulian
RONAN - His name was Vern, and if anyone actually ever called him that, no one can remember.
An aunt who spoke only French and perhaps had trouble saying "Vern" in English called the newborn "bébé," the French word for baby.
It was 1915.
"Bébé" morphed into "Bud," and for the next 96 years, Vern Cheff was Bud Cheff to all who knew him, or knew of him.
Most everyone in the Mission Valley did. Plenty were related to him.
Cheff, who died early Monday morning, left behind six of his seven children, 33 to 34 grandchildren, 82 great-grandchildren and "19 or so" great-great-grandchildren.
"Those might not be exact," says one of his sons, 74-year-old Bud Cheff Jr. "I wrote it all down, but I'm not sure where I put it. Those should be pretty close, though."
The wonderful thing was that many of them got to say their goodbyes over the past couple of weeks, when Bud Cheff Sr.'s body finally started giving out on him.
The family patriarch, a longtime outfitter, had still been riding horseback into the wilderness at the age of 95.
"For the last two weeks, anywhere from three to four, to up to two dozen, family members were with him day and night," Bud Cheff Jr. said. "And dad was alert to the last six to eight hours. He gotto tell almost every grandchild goodbye."
About a half hour after midnight, he left this world.
***
The first Cheff ancestor - "a relative of about four ‘greats,' " Bud Jr. says - arrived in Montana in the early1800s with explorer David Thompson.
By the time Ovila Cheff emigrated from Canada in the 1890s,there were already 40 to 50 Cheffs living in western Montana.
The family helped establish Frenchtown.
Ovila first worked at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch near Deer Lodge,then signed on with the Anaconda Co., where an uncle was a tunnel supervisor.
"They sent him to Cuba to help build a smelter down there, and when he got back, he moved to this valley," Bud Jr. says.
Bud Cheff Sr. was born here in 1915, the fourth of 14 children of Ovila and Maria Cheff.
"Dad married pretty young, about 18," Bud Jr. says, and his father started outfitting at about the same time.
He was still a teenager when he took his first customers into what is now the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 1933 - more than 30years before the Bob was designated as a wilderness area.
Bud Sr., who was three-eighths Iroquois Indian, already had a decade's worth of experience in the Bob. He had made his first tripat the age of 8.
"The Flathead Indians took him in every year from the time he was 8 years old with their gathering and hunting parties," Bud Jr.says.
Accompanied by Eneas Conko, Bud Sr. shot his first bull elk at the age of 9 using Conko's .30-.30.
"Eneas gave the rifle to my father, and Dad used it his whole life," Bud Jr. says. "It had 30-some notches in the stock that Eneas had put in every time he killed a grizzly bear."
***
That rifle hangs in the Ninepipes Museum ofEarly Montana, opened in 1997 by Bud Jr. and his wife Laurel, with lots of help and participation from Bud Sr. and his wife Adelle.
Adelle passed away in 1999, just two days after she and Bud Sr.celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary.
"We get a lot of school kids at the museum, and especially for the lower grades, Dad liked to drum, sing songs and tell stories,"Bud Jr. says. "He'd tell them how they used to gather pine nuts,catch fish and frogs, and eat frog's feet. He saved hundreds of letters of fan mail from the kids."
Most of Bud Sr.'s own children ended up much like he did - with given names that no one knows them by.
Oldest daughter Viola, who died in 1959, went by Ola.
Bud Jr. is actually Vern Edmond Cheff Jr.
"My son is Vern Edmond III, and my grandson is Vern Edmond IV," Bud Jr. says. "But we're all ‘Buds.' Dad, my son, my grandson and me all went into the Bob Marshall a while back to look for some of Dad's old bear traps, and every time someone hollered ‘Bud,' three people answered."
Next is Kenneth, who lives in Missoula, followed by Roger (he's known as Buck) of Ronan; Edward (he goes by Mick and runs the Cheff Guest Ranch and his father's old outfitting business) of Charlo; Roxanne (Roxie) of Boise; and Dan (he's known as Hap, or Happy) of Trout Creek.
"All the given names were never really used, except for Kenny and Roxie," Bud Jr. says.
***
Bud Sr., who spoke only French and Iroquois when he first started school on the Flathead Reservation, could be a demanding father, Bud Jr. says.
"He made sure his kids were honest and hardworking," Bud Jr.explains. "He was the hardest-working guy I ever knew, and pound-for-pound, the strongest too. He was almost Superman."
An ironworker when he wasn't outfitting - "an Iroquois tradition," his oldest son says - Bud Sr. survived a rock slide that took the lives of everyone else on the crew he worked on while Kerr Dam was being constructed.
"He helped carry one boy out who had two broken legs and internal injuries, who died a couple of days later," Bud Jr. says."Dad went through a lot, and survived a lot, but in some ways he led a charmed life."
It was best, probably, when Bud Sr. was in his beloved Mission Mountains or the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
"He spent a lot of time in the Bob, because it was a better place to take guests," Bud Jr. says. "But he loved the Mission Range. He loved every wilderness. He scoured every flank of every mountain, and he loved to share it. If you loved the outdoors, he wanted to show you his backyard."
The funny thing, for a guy so close to the earth, Bud Jr. says,was his father's fascination with the heavens.
"He'd say, ‘I sure would like to go with those astronauts into space,' " Bud Jr. says. "Computers and him - he couldn't quite get with that. But outer space fascinated him. He went to school in a horse-drawn wagon, and he watched astronauts go live on space stations. That's a pretty big jump for one lifetime."
But it was a long one, and a rich one. Vern E. "Bud" Cheff Sr.seemed to leave behind a life to be celebrated more than a death to be mourned.
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