Stanley G Larum

George Stanley Larum RONAN - Stanley Larum, 89, a retired rancher, died Saturday, April 17, 2004, at St. Luke's Extended Care Facility after an extended illness. His ashes will be scattered on the eastern Montana prairie in southern Phillips County, on his first ranch at Spring Coulee. Larum was born to Norwegian immigrants Henry and Ingeborg Larum on April 3, 1915, at the family homestead just north of Malta in the Circle Diamond community. He received a grade school education. From his teens, he worked as a cowboy for several ranchers - including the Richard Town Ranch on the Missouri River - and was noted for his ability to ride broncs. He was one of the wild-horse runners - daredevil cowboys who chased down, corralled and captured the wild horse herds that ran in the Missouri River Breaks in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1943, he bought a ranch at Spring Coulee, east of Zortman near the present-day Charles Russell Wildlife Refuge. In 1954, he bought a farm in the Mission Valley near Charlo in western Montana, where he raised cattle from 1960 until his retirement in 1993. He had a considerable reputation as a stockman. He was a self-taught musician - playing the banjo, guitar and harmonica by ear. As a young man, he was a talented boxer who was celebrated in a published poem by cowboy poet Stillman Webb. Larum is survived by Pauline, his wife of 59 years, of Pablo; two sons, Charles of Pablo and Glen of Odessa, Texas; three daughters, Nancy Larum of Missoula, Jane Nelson of Kirkland, Wash., and Mary Petrocy of Carteret, N.J.; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. He is also survived by two brothers, Gordon of Medford, Ore., and Henry of Lolo; and two sisters, Esther LoPorto of Missoula and Helen Losleben of Duvall, Wash. He was preceded in death by his parents; two brothers, Norman of Missoula and Oscar of Albany, Ga.; and a sister, Lillian Warner of Plains. Memorial services will also be held later this summer in Phillips County.