Distinctly Montana Magazine

81 w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m (406) 442-0033 shelliescountrycafe.com Best Breakfast Sandwich Best Diner Best Pies Best Breakfast Best Brunch Best Lunch Best Milkshakes ThankYou For Voting For Us! 2025 o f BEST M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F 2025 o f BEST M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F THE SIGN-OFF It's no small irony that Ed Craney—the man who lit up Montana's map and brought it into the broadcast age, who gave the state its first taste of the visual language of American iconography— would, in the end, watch his own world dim as he slowly lost his sight to macular degeneration. The same man who once invited ad reps to a meeting catered with caviar and Danish hams only to tell the ad men later to "get off your ass and get out there," was also the man who, in 1948, formed the Charles Russell Memori- al Committee to buy back a collection of Russell paintings about to be sold and shipped to the East Coast. Later, he created the Greater Montana Foundation, which still funds programming and scholarships in television and broadcast journalism today. Even as his vision faded, Craney paid people to read him the newspaper at his Nissler Junction home, so he could keep up with what was happening in the world. When his health declined further and he could no longer communicate, he was moved to a nursing home in Montpelier, Idaho, where he died on March 6, 1991. In the end, Craney wasn't a man who felt his life need- ed to be celebrated. Without any pomp or circumstance—and it most definite- ly wasn't televised—his final request, honored by those who knew him, was that no funeral or memorial be held in his name. So maybe the most fitting thing we can say about Ed Craney isn't written on a plaque, or a foundation that bears his name, or even found in the fine print of a Senate committee hearing— but in those boys still standing outside the appliance store on Harrison Avenue in Butte, unaware that just down the street, above Frank Reardon's Pay-N-Save Supermarket, a man was about to send the signal that would change Montana forev- er. They watched as a monochromatic test pattern flickered to life on the screen—geometric shapes and lines appeared, the ghostly glow of a Native American chief in full headdress. For that brief moment, they weren't in Butte at all, but maybe somewhere inside the signal itself, and part of something much larger than even they could understand, something that was happening everywhere all at once, and this would change their lives as they knew it.

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