“After I retired from the Navy, I planned to be a bum on the beach in the Philippines,” LaRock says, “and do that until either my liver or heart gave out.”
His father's death in 1988, three years before LaRock had his 20 years in with the Navy, changed that.
Then it was his turn.
He headed back to Montana after his discharge in 1991, a day before his 40th birthday, stopping in Wells, Nev., where he checked into a motel ... walked across the street for dinner ... dumped what change he had in his pocket into a slot machine ... and won enough to pay for dinner, gas, the motel room, several more hours of gambling and still have $60 left.
“About 3 in the morning I realized two things: It was my birthday, and I had a long drive ahead of me,” he says, “so I quit while I was ahead and went back to the room.”
LaRock ran the Thompson River Ranch until the family sold it in 1995. Spent a year doing nothing.
“Which I enjoyed,” LaRock says, “but a year was enough. It was time to move onto other things, and I caught the political bug.”
He lost his first race, for Sanders County commissioner, in 1996 to Hank Laws in the Republican primary.
In 1997, LaRock lost his first bid for the mayor's job, to incumbent Gerald Neal, 119 -104.
“The last week before the election, I thought I had it in the bag and lightened up,” LaRock says. “I learned never to do that again.”
Unable to win an election, LaRock finally landed the mayor's job three years later when he was appointed to fill out the term of Neal, who resigned amid allegations of a sex scandal and sexual harassment charges at City Hall (see related story).
He got the job, LaRock says, “Probably because I was the only person foolish enough to submit a letter saying I was interested in it.”
He's never had anyone file to run against him in the nine years since.
“Seems to be the only elections I ever win,” LaRock says with a laugh. “But I think I do a pretty good job. It's not an easy job, but once you get in it, it is pretty interesting.”
LaRock, who likes to sit on his deck in nicer weather, smoke a cigar and pore over law books, became the first Republican elected mayor of Thompson Falls when he ran - unopposed - for his first full term in 2001.
“Of course, if I'd run as a Democrat I would have been the first Democrat,” he says.
City elections had always been nonpartisan, but LaRock's reading of Montana law while sitting on his deck led him to believe that until the question was put to city voters, city elections were required to be partisan.
Making sure the city complies with all laws as it conducts its business is one of his most important duties, LaRock says. He didn't care whether city elections were partisan or nonpartisan, he just wanted them to be legal.
When voters decided to return to nonpartisan city elections, LaRock was re-elected in 2005 without party affiliation - and again without opposition.
Still, he's a staunch Republican - he has a framed picture of Ronald Reagan in his office at City Hall - who also isn't afraid to take his party to task.
The picture of Reagan is there because “he's the only president I ever met,” LaRock says. Reagan visited a battleship on which LaRock was serving during his 20 years in the Navy, the USS New Jersey, and “the captain introduced me to him, so I could introduce him to everyone else,” LaRock says. “I think the captain did it that way so he wouldn't have to remember everyone's name.”
After “enthusiastically” voting for former U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns the first two times Burns ran, LaRock says he “reluctantly” voted for Burns a third time, believing the Republican senator had gone back on his word to voters that he would only serve two terms.
When the state GOP endorsed the then-embattled Burns for a fourth term prior to the 2006 Republican primary, where Burns' opponents included state Sen. Bob Keenan, it was too much for LaRock.
He says he cast his ballot for Libertarian Party candidate Stan Jones in the general election in protest of what LaRock felt was a premature endorsement.
“I thought we should have a fair and open primary,” he explains. “I think if we had, Burns would have won.”
Of course, LaRock himself went behind the backs of the council and townspeople recently when he created the position of deputy mayor and appointed Trevor Peterson to the job.
Don't get your undergarments in a bind - the job is unofficial, has no power or duties, pays nothing and the “appointee” is the 7-month-old son of the new city clerk, Chelsea LaBelle.
When Kathy Denke - who continued on as city clerk for several years after LaRock became mayor - decided to retire, LaBelle was brought in to train under Denke for a year.
Denke's untimely death cut the training woefully short, LaBelle says, and to top it off, not long after that LaBelle had to tell the mayor she was pregnant.
“He told me not to worry, we'd make it work,” LaBelle says, and they have - the city clerk's office now sports a crib and play swing, and the baby splits his time between the babysitter and City Hall.
“I told her I'd even change diapers if I had to,” LaRock says, “but so far I haven't.”
Trevor's now old enough to scoot up and down the hall in his walker, and swings into the mayor's office on a regular basis. LaRock sometimes hoists the baby out of the walker and bounces him on his knee while meeting with city employees, and Trevor sometimes gets his arms to flapping like a bird, which always draws a laugh.
“What?” LaRock says in mock indignation. “I can't meet with my public works director without my deputy mayor present, can I?”
Retired from the Navy, LaRock is able to devote himself full time to the part-time mayor's job, which pays him $800 a month - $700 in salary, and $100 for “longevity pay” the council wanted to authorize for LaRock without committing itself to a higher salary for another mayor down the road.
“Whatever it is, I'm sure I don't make minimum wage,” LaRock says. “But money shouldn't be why you do this job. I knew what it paid when I asked for it.”
The mayor has only had to break one tie vote among the six-member City Council in the past eight years, and calls the current council “the best I've ever worked with.”
The most difficult and time-consuming issue during LaRock's administration has been fixing the Thompson Falls water system, but his greatest pride is the Thompson Falls Public Library, which was crammed into City Hall when LaRock became mayor but now has its own spacious home on the city's main drag, Highway 200.
Water became a problem during the winter of 1996-97, before LaRock was mayor, when avalanches dumped “a ton of debris” into Ashley Creek, the town's water source.
“All we'd ever had to do was grab it out of the creek, chlorinate it and shove it in a pipe,” LaRock says.
The town ended up under a boil order for three months after the avalanches. Solutions were determined before LaRock became mayor, but it was left to him to implement them after Neal resigned, and it took five years.
“They chose the most complicated and expensive way to fix it,” LaRock says, “but it also came with the lowest maintenance cost once it was fixed. You can get grants to build anything, but you can't get grants to maintain it once it's done.”
The library is a more personal thing.
Louie LaRock may come from the only family whose children were born in two different Hot Springs.
LaRock entered the world on July 2, 1951, in Hot Springs, S.D.
“I call it an accident,” the mayor says. “My parents were college students at (the University of Montana), my mom's folks lived in South Dakota, and I was born while they were there on summer vacation. I'm a fourth-generation Montanan who was conceived in Montana and accidentally born in South Dakota.”
His two sisters were born at the old Sanders County Hospital in Hot Springs, after the family had moved to Plains, where LaRock grew up.
It was in Plains that LaRock developed his love of reading - and libraries.
“I got my first library card when I was 7,” LaRock says, “and the library is truly where I got my education. When I first went to school when I was 6, they told my parents I couldn't read. Read? Hell, it turned out I couldn't see.”
With his first pair of glasses - they've evolved into the Coke bottle-bottom variety over the years - the world opened up to LaRock through books.
He literally worked his way through the library as he grew up, eventually coming to tackle entire sections at a time.
“I'd go in the library, pick a section and read every book in it,” LaRock says. “It didn't matter if it was atomic physics or whatever, I'd read every book.”
“I didn't retain much,” he says with a smile, “but I read it all.”
Libraries are different places these days, he says - as much “learning centers” as a place to borrow a book - but with public computers offering Internet access, more important than ever.
It was one of LaRock's first moves as mayor. “We ran a mill levy, got it passed, bought a building and moved an entire library - I don't ever want to have to move a library again - in the space of a year,” he says.
The Montana Library Association was impressed. It gave Thompson Falls its Library of the Year Award in 2002.
The LaRock family moved to Thompson Falls from Plains in 1968 after Louis T. LaRock - the mayor is Louis R. - bought the Thompson River Ranch. LaRock graduated from Thompson Falls High School in 1969.
Louis T. and June LaRock divorced in 1970, and his father remarried and had another son in the 1980s.
“I told my dad I always wanted a baby brother, but did I really have to wait 30 years?” says LaRock, 57, who admits he has had very little contact with 27-year-old Sam, his half-brother.
Thompson Falls was a much different place when he graduated from high school, LaRock says.
“If you wanted to stay, you could back then, you had that option,” he says. “The sawmills offered steady work and good pay, and you could stay here and raise a family.”
He never wanted to.
“I couldn't wait to leave,” he admits, and with the Navy he saw both coasts, every continent but Antarctica, and circled the globe by sea.
He didn't plan on ever returning, much less becoming mayor, a job that, in a small town, he says could just as easily be labeled “the complaint department.”
“I don't get a ton,” he says, “but I think people feel better if they get to gripe to somebody.”
These days, he says, most of the calls he fields concern dog problems.
“I'd have to say that's the biggest,” LaRock goes on. “And there's always the ongoing deer issue. Half the town feeds 'em, and the other half wants to machine-gun 'em.”
But none of it makes a beach in the Philippines seem more appealing any more, LaRock says. He loves Thompson Falls.
“I spent 20 years living on a shelf,” in the Navy, LaRock says. “This is home. It's a small town. I can walk the street and know almost every person I meet.”
He's heard through the grapevine he may finally have an opponent for the mayor's job when elections are held later this year and says that's fine with him.
Win or lose, the mayor says, “I'll be here until they throw dirt on my face.”
1999 complaint still making news in Thompson Falls
THOMPSON FALLS - The events leading up to Louis LaRock's appointment as mayor of Thompson Falls in 2000 are still making news, with ramifications for local governments across Montana.
Last month, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that cities are not automatically immune from lawsuits stemming from conduct at public meetings in the case that led to former Mayor Gerald Neal's resignation and LaRock's appointment.
The case began in 1999, when Kathy Denke, Thompson Falls' city clerk and finance officer, filed a complaint alleging sexual harassment by then-Mayor Neal.
The City Council agreed to a confidential settlement with Denke, and the mayor and all council members signed an agreement saying they would not retaliate against Denke for bringing the action.
But then-council member Maurice Shoemaker, saying constituents had approached him about rumors of a large cash settlement, tried to place the issue on the council agenda. When Neal initially refused, Shoemaker eventually distributed letters to citizens that “implied that there was improper payment of substantial money, perhaps divided between the mayor and clerk, and that there was a cover-up regarding the settlement” according to a separate suit Denke filed against Shoemaker.
Shoemaker's letter also accused Denke of improperly maintaining city books, according to court documents, and asked Denke to apologize - as well as resign.
The matter was placed on the council's agenda for Feb. 14, 2000 - and the meeting was moved to a community center in anticipation of a large crowd.
The meeting began with Neal, who admitted no wrongdoing, announcing his immediate resignation.
“May God judge you more fairly than you have judged me,” said Neal, who then left the building.
With the council president out of town on business, a senior council member was left to take charge of the meeting who “did not know how appropriately to limit the discussion, so she did not,” the Supreme Court wrote in its decision.
With Denke on stage in her role as town clerk, Shoemaker then discussed rumors concerning the city's confidential settlement with Denke, and some members of the public opined that she was a willing participant, on city time and at City Hall, in what she had termed sexual harassment.
Denke, who died in 2007, was diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression and determined to be suicidal in the wake of the meeting, according to court documents.
She also filed a human rights complaint, charging unlawful retaliation by Shoemaker and the city, based in part on statements made at the council meeting.
According to court documents, Shoemaker testified at the ensuing hearing that whenever there is an allegation of sexual harassment he believed both parties to be at blame because “it takes two to tangle.”
He also testified that he “did not care if Kathy Denke had sexual harassment, or whatever you want to call it, 40 times a day, as long as it is not at City Hall or on city time.”
The examiner who heard the case said it involved a “conflict between the right to free speech ... and the right to be free from illegal retaliation.” While finding that Shoemaker had been retaliatory against Denke and should pay her $7,500, the examiner also said the comments at the meeting were privileged under state law, that the city could not be held liable for them and that the city was immune from legal action over the decision to allow unlimited public discussion.
The Montana Human Rights Commission affirmed the findings. Denke filed an appeal in district court and lost.
But on a second appeal, the state's Supreme Court ruled the District Court judge relied on a flawed analysis of state law, and that the city's free-speech argument - based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan - was “misplaced.” It returned the case to District Court on Dec. 16.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)
Carol LaRock wrote on Jan 13, 2009 10:04 AM:
Thanks,
Carol LaRock "