Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • FA L L 2 0 1 6 74 Browder is elegant and slender with intel- ligent, playful blue- grey eyes. She wears a crocheted top the waitress says she loves and Browder graciously accepts the compliment. I ask her about being in the first female fire- fighting crew and about going to court to battle Montana's medical establishment, and she admits these were both conscious political acts. Just after moving to Missoula in the summer of 1970, when she was 24, Dolly worked as a teacher. She got bored in the summer months, and decided she would apply to be a forest firefighter. e US Forest Service laughed at her since women were not allowed to do this job. Dolly's persistence paid off when they finally agreed to train her if she got a bunch of women together who were will- ing to learn the ropes. So she placed an ad in the newspaper and received replies from about a dozen women, and together they formed a group called the Red Star Crew. ey were sent for training, which Dolly laughingly says was terribly inadequate: "We were shown a video and given a hard hat and that was it!" In 1972 they were sent by heli- copter to a forest fire in Idaho. After fighting this one, they received a bad review from their superiors. Dolly was incensed and decided that the only way to get the Forest Service to listen to their demands was to sue them. So she did. Shortly afterwards men in suits showed up from Washington, D.C. to interview her and others on her crew. She put forth a strong case that women should not have to set up their own crews; they should be able to fight alongside their male counterparts. For the first time, she was heard. e whole thing was kept quiet and solved inter- nally. To this day, she is loath to speak about it as she was urged not to men- tion the litigation publicly. But Dolly feels that the Forest Service learned from this whole affair. Since her battle with them, women have been hired in high positions along with men — and in great numbers. She credits the For- est Service for moving with the times. When I ask her about her political leanings, she says that both her father and grandfather were card-carrying Communists. is was particularly difficult for her father who was active in the 1950s when McCarthyism was at its height. Whether it is in her blood or simply a result of an early political awareness, Dolly's life is one of cham- D OLLY BROWDER'S LIFE STORY IS ONE OF MILESTONES, NOT SIMPLY FOR MONTANA, BUT FOR WOMEN ACROSS THE UNITED STATES. Along with two other women, Zona Lindemann and Marcia Hogan, Browder formed the first paid fire-fighting crew for the US Forest Service — a step that led to a photo of Browder in a 1974 Mademoiselle article about women with risky professions subtitled "None But the Brave Need Apply." She also paved the way for women in Montana to win the right to give birth at home and for the practice of midwifery to be legal in the state by becoming Montana's first accredited direct-entry midwife. Born into a left-leaning political family in 1945, Browder's trajectory has been one of fighting "for the underdog," which she tells me over lunch in Missoula often means "women." AMERICA'S FIRST FEMALE FIREFIGHTER Dolly in 1972 By JOANNA POCOCK DOLLY BROWDER: D E PA R T M E N T H E R I TA G E

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