The friends who came to her Pattee Canyon home for dinner several times a week must have wondered how she did it. A little pre-Montana history would have made it obvious.
Teaching in a one-room school, setting up community theaters, running the admissions office at a major city hospital and serving as social hostess and concierge at hotels in Florida were all on Shaffner’s resume before she headed west. She toured for years in a “Home Product and Cooking Demonstration” show and starred in one of the first TV cooking shows ever broadcast, “Laughing With The Ladies,” in Cleveland.
Son Geoff Shaffner said when he and his brother John were drafting Eloise’s obituary, they hit so many notable moments, they wound up deleting a significant bit: what got Eloise to Montana in the first place.
“Before she came out here, she was married for one year, had a miscarriage and her husband died,” Geoff said. “All her close friends knew this, and there’s so much that she’s done, we just didn’t put it together. But I believe she came west because of the big blue skies and big country - where else better can one heal their spirit than Montana?”
When the park lodge closed for the 1950 season, Eloise moved down the road to the nascent Big Mountain Ski Resort, managing its chalet. She met Dean Shaffner there and married him in 1952.
John Shaffner said the ski hill was a little too chaotic. (“She was chief cook and bottle washer, snow-shoveler and fire-starter.”) But Glacier Park was another matter. She remained in its orbit for several years, helping open the hotel in the spring.
“I remember as a child eating in the kitchen at Lake McDonald Lodge, before the guests had come and it was open,” John said. “I’m glad she landed at Glacier Park.”
Meeting Dean prompted a change in Eloise’s style, John said.
“After my parents met and fell in love, there was a great awkwardness in their relationship,” he said. “Mother was almost 10 years older than he was. That’s what made her choose to be particularly careful. She did not want to be perceived a career gal - didn’t want to upstage Dean.”
That may seem an unfounded concern today, but that was 1950s America. In any case, Dean went on to work for one of Missoula’s leading appliance dealers, and Eloise returned to the limelight as a cooking demonstrator for the store. She stopped after they were married, but then put her skills to use for the county extension office. She taught nutrition and meal planning to young families in the University of Montana’s American Indian Program and other venues around the area.
“I don’t think I ever saw her wear a pair of pants except to ski in, or to ride a horse,” John said. “She always wore a dress. In the ’80s or ’90s, I tried to get her to wear pants, but she liked skirts or a dress, and that was it. She was a sort of early feminist, but didn’t ever want to let go of the feminine part of it.”
Neighbor Tommy Lu Worden was struck by Eloise’s outreach instincts.
“She was really exceptional in her care for her friends,” Worden said. “She was a great survivor. It didn’t matter what happened, she seemed she could cope with it. She always had a solution to take care of it in another way.”
The solution usually involved food: 4-H, Western Montana Fair culinary exhibits and the Four Corners Homemakers Club were some of her outlets. One of her pastimes was doing food demonstrations for the Extension Service in the late ’70s and ’80s.
“She wanted to show people you could still eat cheap and have picnics and have fun,” Geoff said. “She would cook on picnic tables in parks around town. She wanted to show kids you didn’t have to go to fast-food spots. They could make stuff for themselves.”
Dean Shaffner bought a Pattee Canyon book bindery, which doubled as the family home. “English Muffin Day” was a family favorite, when the smell of her homemade breakfast treats would spread from the home side of the building to the work area.
“I remember the Missoulian did a full-page story on English muffins in
the 1950s before anyone
knew about English muffins,” John said. “She would make dozens of them in December for gifts.”
Dinner parties were a regular event in the Shaffner home. John recalled one summer when there were houseguests present every single night. The rest of the year, friendly gatherings took place two or three times a week.
That energy level remained high through the last years of her life. Well before people started saying “60 is the new 50,” John said his mother was living the concept. She died May 2, at the age of 94 3/4 years.
“I’m grateful she was able to check out on her own terms,” John said, “in her own house, in her sleep.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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