It was a literal fascination, certainly, that Ostrom played out in his role as DJ for the show “Sleeper’s Lost and Found.” The show, focused on oldies music, aired for more than 15 years on KLCY before a change of station ownership doomed it.
But the radio was also a figurative metaphor for Ostrom, a way of staying in touch with a past - a place that seemed perhaps a little kinder, gentler - he didn’t want to see slip away.
Late middle-age dealt Ostrom some harsh blows - heart trouble, including a triple bypass, and diabetes, which eventually cost him a leg.
Eventually, the combination of health problems killed Ostrom in late July. He was 66.
“He was tired of fighting it all, I think,” his son said. “I think it was hard for him to realize that he wasn’t going to get better.”
Ostrom wasn’t one to shy from the good fight. He spent most of his adult life working for others and volunteering on boards. As a Missoulian story about him in 1996 said: “Scratch the surface of nearly any effort on behalf of poor people in Missoula and you’ll come up with the exuberant face of Elza Ostrom.”
Part of that was the influence of his mother, Mella, who co-founded the group LIGHT in 1968.
“Mom had a big impression on him, I think, and her work stuck with him for a long time,” said his younger brother, Ole Ostrom.
As a boy - he was born and lived most of his life in Missoula - he used to go down to what he called the “cardboard jungles” behind White Pine Sash with his mother to help folks living there.
“My mom was an advocate for poor people right until the moment she died in 1981,” Elza Ostrom said in 1996.
Ostrom was born to Mella and Olaf Ostrom in March 1942. He went to Lowell Elementary and Missoula County High School, which is now Hellgate High School. His father, who came over from Norway when he was 18, worked in the woods, but Elza’s footsteps were more clearly aligned with his mother’s and his own passion for radio.
“He always had a thing for radio and television stuff,” Ole Ostrom said. “He even built a station at home and the neighbors would call and say they heard his voice coming through their TVs.”
Ostrom worked at Yellowstone National Park for a while as a porter, but he also organized talent shows there and even ran a small but illegal radio show.
He also spent some time in San Francisco, where he worked as a chef for the U.S. Navy but also spent time helping to start a teen center.
Ostrom was back in Missoula by the early 1970s, where he served on the board of the Missoula Human Development Council.
For a while, in the 1980s, Ostrom worked at a little record shop called the Memory Bank. It was there that he met Rod Harsell, who was on his way to becoming a program manager for KLCY radio.
“He just had this encyclopedic knowledge of music from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s,” Harsell recalled. “He had an amazing collection of music and an ability to talk about it, so when I became program director, I immediately thought of him for a show.”
The show was called “Sleeper’s Lost and Found,” and it ran on Sunday mornings through the 1990s and ended just last year.
“He just came to life on the radio,” Harsell said. “He had this passion for music and he was just over the top with his excitement on air. Just watching him, he became very animated about it.”
The show, Dave Ostrom said, made his dad feel like a little kid.
“He just loved that music so much,” Dave said.
Ostrom also set up remote equipment for KYSS radio, and Harsell said the combination of radio jobs seemed like a version of heaven on earth to Ostrom.
“I think that was the work that made him happy,” Harsell said. “And I know it really took a lot out of him when it disappeared.”
In fact, in his last years, when Ostrom lost a leg to diabetes, it was the loss of the radio show that really hurt him most deeply.
“He just never let the leg thing get to him, but the radio was another matter,” Dave Ostrom said. “He really struggled with that. That really crushed him.”
Elza Ostrom had telegraphed that love all his life, from the time he took his 7-year-old brother Ole on an ill-fated journey up to TV Mountain to see the antennas to the time he tried to create a better radio antenna by sending up a helium balloon attached to thin copper wire and nearly electrocuted himself.
“I think that was the first time he got himself into the newspaper,” Ole Ostrom said.
Sleeper Ostrom found his life’s work in radio and helping the poor, but he found something more when, at the age of 39, he had his son Dave.
Elza never married Dave’s mom, and eventually raised the boy on his own.
“I know David knows this, but Elza loved him so very, very much,” Ole Ostrom said. “David was just so special for him, and I think they grew very close as David grew older.”
Said Dave: “I will remember him as a very loving and caring father. He was there for me, did homework and stuff. I think his health problems changed him in some ways, but in others he was always the same man.”
Even though the misfortunes of ill health tried to beat the goodness of life out of Ostrom, he never really let go.
“I refuse to change my attitude,” he said years ago. “I’ve always been a happy, joyful person. I don’t want to change. And I want to help other people be that way.”
He certainly did.
“I guess the thing that surprised me at the memorial service was how many things he’d done for people, how many lives he’d touched,” said Ole. “You know, as brothers, you sometimes drift away, doing things with your own family and friends. It really struck me the effect that he had on people, and I don’t know if I had appreciated that about him as much as I should have.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or by e-mail at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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