Terry Conrad was a deejay at a Detroit jazz station who packed his wife, baby girl and everything they owned in a Volkswagen and drove to Montana to transform a tiny college radio station.
The two are among four Montanans who will be honored Friday with the Governor's Arts Awards, the state's highest artistic honor.
Schweitzer will preside over a ceremony at the state Capitol on Friday afternoon, where the four will receive a bronze medallion and recognition for their lifetime achievements.
The other honorees are Corwin “Corky” Clairmont, a contemporary artist from Pablo and member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. A successful artist in his own right, Clairmont also heads the Art Department at Salish Kootenai College and is known for his bold mixed-media pieces.
Missoula native Allen Vizzutti, a trumpeter now living in Seattle, will also be honored. Vizzutti began his career as a high school student at Hellgate High in Missoula. Doc Severinsen visited the school and Vizzutti, a self-taught trumpeter, went to Severinsen's hotel room and impressed the musician, best known for leading the NBC Orchestra on Johnny Carson's late-night show.
Vizzutti later worked in Los Angeles in the 1980s, playing on better than a hundred movie soundtracks, including “Back to the Future” and “Star Trek.”
The honorees are selected every two years by the Montana Arts Council, said Cinda Holt, the council's business development specialist who is also producing this year's awards. Nominations come to the council from citizens across the state, and the council ultimately selects the top four. The governor must then sign off on the selections.
This year marks the 25th year of the awards, which have previously honored well-known artists like pianist Philip Aaberg, historian Stephen Ambrose and ceramic artist Rudy Autio.
This year, Holt said, three of the four honorees have ties to Missoula, with the fourth up the highway in Pablo. But in past years, the awards have gone to Montanans across the state and have gone to artists who create beautiful works, but are not necessarily famous.
The nominations come entirely from the public, Holt said, and the council makes its selections based on merit, not where the artist lives or how well-known he or she may be.
“It's a very public process,” she said.
Lahey, 70, has been writing poems since he was boy. A Butte native, he later worked as an underground miner and a restorer of old houses, among other jobs. But his first love, said Lahey, who now lives in Missoula to be closer to his daughter, was always poetry.
“I was hoping that I would be able to one day make a living as a poet,” Lahey said. “That's a pretty big hope.”
The University of Montana bookstore published Lahey's first volume years ago. A second collection was published in 2005, called “Birds of a Feather.” Lahey has also recently completed a novel - “a real page-turner,” he says - which will be published soon.
Conrad and his wife, Germaine, left Detroit in 1973 to take a job with KUFM, now Montana Public Radio, which broadcasts across half the state. At the time, Conrad said, the station was tiny, barely reached off campus and was mostly for training future radio journalists. The station often broadcast dead air.
By the time Conrad retired in 2001, Montana Public Radio had grown to a major regional public radio station. Affiliated with National Public Radio, the station is still true to its roots, with about half of its programming coming from local talent.
Indeed, Conrad invented “The Pea Green Boat,” KUFM's popular children's show.
All four will be hailed at the Helena event, but the real meat of the prize is the two-hour parties the Arts Council will throw this spring in the honorees' hometowns, Holt said.
All honorees have a local bash thrown in their honor, and to which they invite up to 200 people. The parties include people talking about the artists, a 10-minute documentary of their life and a general celebration of the people. Award-winners can help design the party, Holt said, and past celebrations have included a powwow and a Billings orchestra concert.
Clairmont said he wants his to be a celebration of all the art and artists in his area.
“We have terrific, talented people in this community,” he said, adding that he wants everyone to “just have fun for a day.”
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