Cindi Shaw, Longtime Butte Commissioner

Photo Credit: Butte News

Oral History Transcript of Cindi Shaw

Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: June 11th, 2021
Interview Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: January 2022 by Clark Grant

Aubrey Jaap: It’s June 11th, 2021. We’re here with Cindi Shaw. Cindi, I would like you to start - tell me about your family background. I know you didn’t grow up here, but I’d like to hear still about your family, your parents - tell us about your history.

Cindi Shaw: Ok. Well, I was born on January 5th, 1948. So do the math; I’m 73. And my mother was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was - well at the time I was born, he was still in the Navy I believe, just after World War 2. I was the second of six children. My older brother Roger - I don’t know if you want all those details - but he just passed away a couple of months ago at 76. I have a sister that was born a year and four days after me. I always said she was the accident, because my parents managed to get about 4 years between all of us, even though they were Catholics.

[00:00:52]

Anyway, Patty lives in Missoula. She’s a nurse at St. Patrick’s. My other sister Beth lives in Kansas. She moved from California rather abruptly through the COVID and the politics and she just packed up and moved to Kansas. She works at home and she’s a consultant. And then I have a brother Chris who lives in St. Louis. He’s 65. And my brother Timmy, the baby, died two years ago at the age of 59 of cancer. He was a very well-known photographer in Bozeman. So anyway, that’s the kids. Being in Navy brats, we all were born in a different state. So my dad was in World War 2 and he married my mother a year before he was stationed, in the Navy, to go to the Atlantic to wage war with German U-boats. And when he came back, my brother was already a year old. He hadn’t seen him yet. And that was in Annapolis, Maryland. My mother is from Annapolis, Maryland.

[00:01:55]

But my dad was from Green Bay, Wisconsin. And they met when he was in the Naval Academy, and he married a townie. So I have relatives all over the place. Anyway, so I was born in Rochester, New York. My dad worked for Kodak in between World War 2 and the Korean War. And then when the Korean War hit, he went back into military life. He just basically worked out of Washington, D.C.. So we lived in Maryland at that time and then he moved to a naval base in Rhode Island. My sister Bethy was born in Rhode Island [laughs]. My brother Timmy was born in New Jersey, just driving - and by that time my dad was out of the Navy but he was working at a New York job. So he was an executive for RCA International in New York. And then he moved to Chicago and worked for Brunswick Corporation.

So I moved all over. I’ve been everywhere. And at the age of 18 - we moved to the Midwest when I was 16 - at the age of 18, I graduated from high school. I went to Marian Central Catholic School, Catholic school my whole life. At 19, I went to college, the University of Illinois. I made it through one year and met my husband and got married.

[00:03:23]

So then that was during Vietnam. It was the height of the war in ‘67, so he joined the Army as an officer’s candidate. And thankfully, he never went to Vietnam, but we did move to Germany. And he spent two years in Germany guarding NATO bunkers. And my daughter Heather, my only child, was born in ‘69 in Germany. And I was 21 years old. So after that - I don’t know how much more detail you want of all this [laughs] - ok, we moved back to the States and my husband Jim had a close friend named Craig Vetter, who - they went to college together at the University of Illinois. He did graduate. And Craig Vetter was forming a fledgling company called Vetter Fairing Company. Windjammer fairings, if you had anything to do with motorcycles, they were big. And he was revolutionary about putting a fairing on a frame mount instead of a windshield mount. It was very big and he became a multi-millionaire. And he and my ex-husband were partners. So we spent a lot of time in Randtoul, Illinois. That’s where the factory was. Corn town.

[00:04:41]

In the early 80s, well we went back to Germany a couple of times. My background is half German and half English. I really love Germany. Anyway, after that, I got divorced and I became a single mom. We were living in Wisconsin. I don’t know - fast forward. So Heather graduated from high school. I went to - at the age of 39 I went to paralegal school. It was very new and innovative in the 80s. It was in Racine, Wisconsin, which is where Jon Sesso is from, by the way, Racine. And I lived in Kenosha for about 20 years. And that’s right at the state line of Illinois and Wisconsin. So we had a lot of Bear fans. We had to fight ‘em off because we were die-hard Packer fans. It was a war, yeah.

Jaap: Go, Pack, Go. [laughter]

Shaw: So after that, I went to paralegal school. I got a certificate, and I got hired by the largest law firm in Kenosha. I think they just - they wanted to be the first ones to have a paralegal. I think it was kind of a novel thing. And I turned that into becoming a legal investigator, so I took it a step further. I got my license as a legal investigator. I also had a private detective license in Wisconsin. That’s where I got my research chops from.

Jaap: I was gonna ask, yeah. Ok.

Shaw: Starting out, doing that. And then, a little segue after that. I moved to Phoenix, also was a legal investigator in Phoenix. And a couple years after that, without the details of why, I moved to Oregon to live with my daughter for a little while. And I pretty much had to quit a job for some personal trauma reasons and I went to Oregon. Lived in my daughter’s back bedroom, which was interesting. [laughter] She was with a husband.

[00:06:42]

And then I met Bill Shaw. I started going back to church, kind of became what they called a born-again Christian back then. And turned my life around in a lot of ways, which was pretty awesome. And I married Bill, who is an electrician, and we lived in Oregon for a couple of years and then he got a call to Portland to do - he was an IBEW hand so he moved around. And he became an electrical inspector in Portland; we lived there for a year. And then he got a call to Butte. And at that time, in 1998, REC was called ASME and they were just building ASME. And they needed temporary power, you know, the very beginnings of a business out there in the industrial park out there, the TIFID they called it back then.

And so we moved to Butte. I had never been here, but my sister had been in Missoula, and my brother, since - or in Montana - since the 70s. So I had some family here but I had no idea and I had never been here before. Well I’ll tell you what. We moved here and we rented the top apartment of Elderkin Apartments, which is you know, next to the Beauty College. It’s a little, like a dormer - I’m sure Clark maybe you know if you’ve ever been up there - it’s like being in someone’s attic but with lots of windows. And I’ll never forget - we moved here on March 3rd of 1998. And I’ve been here ever since.

[00:08:19]

Bill started working. It was like a three-month job. And that apartment is at the bottom of Idaho and Park Street. And we were just gonna be here for a while and it was like immediately almost St. Patrick’s Day and we made friends immediately with some people. Butte was so friendly and so open to outsiders and we didn’t know a soul. We did find a church right down the street - St. John’s. And anyhow, we looked up the hill and we see this house right on the corner behind the mansion. And it had a for-sale sign on it. And we were just gonna go back to Oregon, but we went up there and we just thought ‘you know, maybe we can invest in a house.’ We had been married a couple of years. And we called the number and the house was - you know, they showed us the place. Hoarders had been in there. It was cosmetically trashed, but it really was an amazing home to look at. The people - all their utilities had been turned off for several months so they were desperate to sell. I’m not sure what their business was. I had an inkling what it might be.

[00:09:31]

And they had a lot of animals out there too. So we made an offer. We kind of offered $10,000 less and they took it. $28,000 we bought my house for. [laughs] Less than you’d pay for maybe a really well-built garage in Oregon. So we bought the house, and we decided we’d stay there of course until he had to go somewhere else. And sure enough, after three months or so, he decided he needed to go to do another job. And at the time I traveled with him. And so we had a house sitter, a friend that sat there and watched the house for us. But it didn’t take a lot to bring it back to what it is now. And Aubrey - I think Clark you’ve been to my house maybe.

Clark Grant: I think so.

Shaw: Ok. I don’t know if you’ve been to my house.

Jaap: No, I know where you live, but. [laughter] Sorry, that sounds really creepy. It sounds a little creepy - ‘I know where you live Cindi!’ [laughter]

Shaw: Oh no, that’s ok. My address is out there. Because it is - it’s on the registry and everything. But all we had to do was sand the floors a little bit and the floors had a lot of character. And it was built in 1885. So it was built right in between ‘84-’86, when the mansion was being built, and the very first person that lived there worked for [William] Clark’s bank. He was a white collar - they called him a correspondence clerk, which basically back then, everything was written.

[00:10:57]

So I love my house. I’ve been there, like I say, 23 years. It’s got a great history. It’s got some sad history. It’s got some awesome history. But I don’t probably need to go into that now. This is…

Jaap: No I’d like you to tell me a little. Your house does have a great history. I’d like you to just briefly tell me a little bit about it.

Shaw: Ok. [laughter] Well ok, so I come from a detective background - research - a legal research background. And when I first moved to Butte, I thought ‘well maybe I’ll be a private detective’ because I really didn’t need to work. Bill was a great provider and I didn’t know how long I’d be here. At that time, and I could be wrong, you didn’t even need a license to be a private dick back then. You just became one. You did process service and that. Well, when I worked for lawyers, I did a lot of research about legal cases and I had a legal background of sorts. So the idea of process service - I did that too but you know.

So, the Archives - I’m trying to remember - it was down...well it was there. It was here, where it is now, right where we sit! [It was] a lot smaller, a lot different. And I remember coming down here because I wanted to research my house. And I just became a convert, I’m just saying. [laughs] I started hanging out here a lot. Ellen [Crain] can tell you that I’ve been here, I’ve known her all that time.

[00:12:18]

And she also was going through a lot of things where there was nothing but paper copies of everything and card files. So I thought ‘you know what, I think I’ll just become a historical investigator.’ I got the chops to do investigation but this is so interesting. I don’t have to work for lawyers, that was an easy one! And so I started doing that. I joined Butte CPR, got involved with that and did research on my house. It took another 10 years probably to get my sign done because I didn’t know if I’d still be here.

So anyway, that’s about when Bill said, ‘We’re moving to Portland. I’m gonna be the electrical inspector for the airport.’ And I just followed him, like a good wife. And we lived there for a year. We lived in a place that was a - let’s see - it was an old Seventh Day Adventist nursing college. I can’t remember where it was, on Divide and something out there in Portland. I love Portland by the way. It’s a neat city. And they taught missionary students to go out into the field. And I became their house - they let us have a room for free. I was going to the Baptist church back then. This was a Baptist group. And I was a house greeter, I guess. I was there kind of generally managing the house while Bill worked. We did that for a year and I had the house sitter there for a year.

[00:13:48]

And the worst part was that we had this little dog that I adored and he couldn’t be there, so he stayed with the in-laws for a year. And they got really attached to him, but we did get him back. We came back to Butte and that was it; we stayed. And Bill continued travelling and that, you know...I don’t know how much personal stuff you want on this but it is - ok.

Grant: Whatever you’d like to share.

Shaw: Ok he started travelling - he always did - and I just was so happy to have a house. When we lived in Oregon for two years, we had a trailer. And he had it before, and now we had this house. We bought furniture and I got to get to know my neighbors and was getting my roots set here a bit. Well, I was told by Bill a long time ago that IBEW stands for ‘I’ve been everywhere.’ And he loved travelling. He loved the way that everything was different. He’d go to a new job. It was very interesting. And anyway, he continued travelling and I continued setting roots. And after 14 years of marriage, we got divorced. So I hung it out for a long time.

[00:15:00]

So in the divorce, we had no children and we just - Buddy had already passed away, my little dog. And so I just kept my little house. And I should backtrack a little bit. Three or four years before we got divorced, we had bought a house that was gonna be torn down by Town Pump. They were making way for the Lucky Lil’s. There were two shotguns and a Queen Anne, little ones, houses. And Town Pump offered them up to anyone that would like to buy them for a dollar. And then they would pay to move them. So we did some research and - I’m trying to remember the chronology - but I believe some nuns in Italy, they got a hold of us to let us know that the house was the home of Mother Botego, Selistine Botego, her name was. She was - Selistine was the Irish side and Botego was her dad. He was Italian and he was a miner.

And that was her home, her birth home, and she lived there for quite a while in Butte before she became a nun. And then when she became a nun, she started a whole missionary group of sisters. And I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of it. It’s passed my brain. And so the nuns actually came and visited us to talk about - they didn’t want the house to be destroyed because it meant a lot to them. They knew all about the house. They knew all about Butte because of her roots. And so we bought the house from Town Pump. And we had already bought the land behind my house, which it goes clean up from - it goes all the way to Copper [Street]. And it goes from Idaho Street to Montana. There was like five lots, and we paid 500 bucks a piece back then for them.

[01:16:46]

Imagine that! Three of them are buildable too. So we had the land and we weren't sure what we were gonna do with it. We had Don Tammietti, who has since passed - they called him Cyclops because he had an eye missing. And he had a - you’ve heard of - they still call it the Cyclops wrestling team.

Jaap: Yeah.

Shaw: That’s Don Tammietti because he sponsored it for many years, and his son now does the moving. But it was the last house that he moved. And I wanna tell you. It was in 2002. I have a video of the whole thing. They took that house, and it was a Queen Anne, so it wasn’t just a little workman cottage. It had the little turret on the side. But one story. And he drove it up the hill like a car. They had to take all the wires down from Platinum Street. They get to - you know how Copper is - we have lower Copper and upper Copper. And it needed to go on the corner of Copper and Idaho, right behind my house. And he pulled it up, and there’s that slanty rock wall there. And I have a picture. It was this far from the wall. And then the land - we had to build a basement to put it on, a daylight basement, and that was all ready.

So he pulls up, he pulls past Idaho, and he backs this thing in like a car. And it’s got these beams on there. Oh my gosh. And his secret was - I’m trying to think of the dish soap. Joy. He just poured Joy on the beams and they just slid that thing off like it was snot, you know, coming off the beams onto our foundation. It was something to see!

[00:18:25]

I have pictures. I have a video. You can’t even begin to imagine how they can move a house up on that hill and out it on the corner.

Jaap: Yeah, it’s so steep up there.

Shaw: Yeah. And it had a house there once long ago. That whole area behind me was loaded with houses, including alley houses. So the Quartz alley had houses on it. And yeah, so they parked it on there. And the idea was that we were gonna open it up as a Christian retreat, like a mission retreat. And we had all the other land just east of that and we were gonna have like a gazebo with a walk, like a meditation walk, that type of thing. We were really anxious to do this. We just had it laid on our hearts. And the COpper King Mansion folks were all involved in it as well.

So the nuns came and had their pictures taken in the house and it was very sweet, you know. But things don’t always happen the way you would like. We had a non-profit. I took care of that. And I made sure we had fundraisers and everything else to get things done. We had people donate furniture. But anyway, the long story short of that is that never happened. And well, Bill lives there now. [laughs] My ex-husband. I laugh because we have this hi-Bill-hi-Cindy relationship; that’s it. We have a non-relationship. And when we got divorced, it was pretty non - you know - it was nothing really negative. Well, negative but not bad. You know what I mean? It was just one of those things. So he continued to work out at REC as an electrician and then he retired and he moved up top. He still working on the house after [since] 2002. So the math. Oh my god. It’s almost 20 years ago. But anyhow, we’ll just leave it at that.

[00:20:19]

Ok so that didn’t happen and so that’s 2002. Ok the next step in my life is - the mall was looking for somebody to do some plant trimming, and I’m a gardener. And I used to do it Oregon. I had my own gardening business - I had the lawnmower and my little pickup truck and I’d do a lot of trimming. I know plants. I was a master gardener in Wisconsin, so I had a background to do that sort of thing. And I also got my master gardener’s certificate here in Montana because the plants are so different. Here in an alpine climate, it’s very different. Anyway, so. I got me an old Jeep Wagoneer and I threw all my tools - you know, I got all my tools and everything and I started a business. It’s called Plant Maintenance, meaning plants. Well, you don’t know all the brochures I got after that. All these factories wanting to know if I did plant maintenance. [laughter]

I still get ‘em. But anyway, and I still do - I have customers. Anyway, I started out at the mall. And I have to have insurance and I had to have bonding and I had a business. And when I was doing that, I also had some smaller clients, all the Glacier Banks. I had several businesses. It was a great - it was just a summer thing but I loved it. And as I was at the mall, I met a guy who had a business in Missoula, and he was in Butte now. He now has Copper City Lawn and Tree - Monty Field, don’t know if you know Monty.

[00:21:53]

And we went into work together. And he got the boom trucks and did the tree [work]. He was a big - he’s a tree - like a monkey. Tree trimmer. And I got involved with that. It was a lot of work. Boy I’ll tell ya. I weighed about thirty pounds less than I do now. Oh lord that was a lot of work. I did what tey call bucking brush. So I would trim - we would trim hedges and things - but whatever landed on the ground, we had to toss it into a pickup truck. And I knew plants. The nice thing is I knew how to trim. I had that experience.

So in - let me think now - in ‘04, I decided that my neighborhood could use some help. And there was a - maybe because of my legal background or whatever, I’m not sure - but there was an open for the County Assessor in ‘04. And I have no problem getting out - I’m not shy I’ll just say. And I lived a block from the courthouse, so I went and I applied. And the first thing I said was, ‘Where’s the job description?’ They looked at me in the Clerk and Recorder like, there’s no job description! [laughs] You need to be over 18. You had to be a resident, and you had to be a resident for over 3 months. That was it. And an American citizen. I forgot that part. [laughs]

[00:23:19]

That’s all you need to do to be an elected official. Imagine! It’s still that way. So anyway, I applied. And then I bought signs and I went all over - you know the Assessor is county-wide. It’s not district-wide. And I went out and I just - I knocked on doors. And I have no problem doing that. Like I said, I felt pretty comfortable. And I handed my cards out. And people would say, ‘wow, no one’s ever knocked on my door or put signs up.’ And I had two people that opposed me. Dan Fisher and a guy named Tom Williams, I think his name was. And then the primary came. And back then, you could watch TV, a closed circuit TV at the courthouse, and watch the election results come through. And they have chairs set up so you can sit there and watch. And so I’m sitting there and I got Dan behind me and Tom behind him I think. And the results are coming up and you know, I’m getting votes. And one of them said, and I wanna say it was Dan - I told him that it was him. He doesn’t remember. He said, ‘Who the hell is Cindi Shaw!’ [laughter] Because I’m new to Butte like six years, you know? And I didn’t win. I was third in the primary.

But then after the primary, there was a special ballot for a study commission. And in ‘04 - every ten years there’s a study commission, since ‘74 [which ran] till ‘76. And then ‘84-’86, ‘94-’96. There were study commissions every ten years. And it’s a two-year stint. And you don’t get paid, but you’re involved in government. So I applied for that, and by gosh out of like 25 people, I was 4th up, because they probably knew my name. But I mean anybody can apply for that, and so I was elected to the study commission along with nine other. There were ten of us.

[00:25:03]

And it took two years and we did put forth quite a few ballot requests and they were overwhelmingly voted in by the voters.

Jaap: So for this purpose - I think we know what the study commission is but would you just tell what the purpose of the study commission [was]?

Shaw: Of course. So Butte-Silver Bow is a city-county combined government, and that was decided back in ‘76 when we became a city-county government. And at the time, I believe now that I got this right - I should know - at the time, we were struggling. The town was struggling and the county was struggling. Financially, the mines - you know it was before ‘81 when the Berkeley Pit opened up and it was really rough around here. So there was a state law that allowed a city to combine their county with them because of economic strife, I guess you’d call it. And Anaconda-Deer Lodge did the same thing, because they were our smelter. And it was all mining related of course.

So it was a huge deal to do such a thing, and when they did do it, part of what we did was we changed from a - I don’t know what they’d call it right now, but we went to a charter-driven government, rather than a legislative-driven government. And it was city-county combined. So the tricky part was like combining the city police with the county sheriff. And there was some - that one in particular was agonizing. It was - I guess there was a lot of not-happy people. But there was no longer a city limits. So fireworks went out the window, and that’s another story that I changed. Everything went to the county’s. It was sort of a hit or miss whether they decided on county’s rules or the city’s rules.

[00:26:58]

So part of the deal was though, every ten years when you’re a city-county government, you have the charter-driven government. Every ten years, you have to put on the ballot to ask the citizenry if they would like to have another study commission to study our government and make sure it’s still working the way that we wanted it to. God knows what you would do if they decided not to. I’m not sure what would happen! But that was just the rule. It was probably just to keep a handle on things not going awry and making sure things continue to go the way they wanted it to. So if the electorate, if they decide that they want to have it on the ballot, then it goes on the ballot. And then it’s voted in or out. First they have to decide if they even want to put it on the ballot. And then they can vote on it. I think that’s how it went.

So in 2004, the county decided, you know, they voted yes, ‘we want a study commission.’ And that’s what happened. And this last one, in 2014, the voters decided no. It was on the ballot, and they decided ‘no we don’t wanna have it,’ which I was very surprised at, to be honest. Now we have to wait until 2024 to put it back on again. When I was on there, there were a couple of things that had kinda transpired. So between two thousand - let’s see, hang on - between 1996 and 2004, there was some huge changes in our legislature. We ended up with the - it would be the - you know, you can’t fire somebody for anything but cause. It’s the - I can’t - it just evaded me. But anyway, it has to do with employment justice. And in between that time, that happened, so it changed - the state law completely trumps local law. We can have local law changes but they have to be more restrictive, not less restrictive.

[00:29:09]

So when we had the employee law, it changed our charter. But you can’t change the charter unless you go to the voters to change the charter. It wasn’t changed and if you recall - I don’t know, you weren’t here Clark - but let’s see. [pause] When the law changed, it was not changed in the charter and when one of our new chief executives came on board, he went by the old way, which was you could choose to fire people without cause. And that created a huge problem here and we were involved in a couple million-dollar lawsuits, which we paid. So because of that, when this ‘04 commission came, man we were on top of that like snot because we had to get that changed in the charter.

And it also begged the question - what is something happens in a ten-year period? What the heck do you do? Well, I know what you do. You have the county attorney put it together to change the charter. And I think it can be changed. I believe you have to have a special election if you’re not on an election year to add it. But if it’s something that has to be done right away, it will be done anyway to be added on. That was a mess. And so I came on board with that ‘04-’06. That was number one. We had to put language in that matched the state language that you cannot be fired without cause. And we also made the Animal Control Services department a standalone department, because it was under Public Works, and that had its ups and downs. [laughter] it sort of like fell through the cracks in a lot of ways. And we also allowed the chief executive to hire people on contract. They never used to do that. You were hired or you weren’t, but you could do it on contract and you could have a timeline of how long that person could be in. And there were a couple of others and they had to do with oversight and public information. One was that we needed to publish the finance and budget every year in a paid publication. And the other one was the chief executive had to - he had to have goals and he had to report on the goals after a year.

[00:31:40]

So they don’t exactly go in the paper, but with Dannette Gleason [Finance & Budget Director], we do a ton of public, you know, very transparent outreach. Yeah, those were all voted in. I think we had 68% of voters voting all of those in. And that all came out of our study commission. So I’m just surprised, to be honest, that we didn’t have another one because you never know. There’s always something that could come up.

So when I was on the study commission, we met every week. And we interviewed every single department head and we asked them what they liked about their department and what they didn’t, what they’d like to see changed. Oh, and the other thing was we had five - County Assessor, County Superintendent, County Auditor...I’m missing somebody. There are four - I think that’s all of them - there are four county positions that changed when we consolidated back in the seventies. And they - over those years, they kind of dissipated and started losing a lot of their authority. And it just seemed silly to continue having them. And so we suggested that we put that on the ballot, that we get rid of - oh the County Administrator is the other one. What they do is, if somebody dies intestate, the county takes that on. But all of those functions can be handled by the state, including the assessor. I think we’re the last county now that has a county assessor. That’s all gone to state. And as you know, our county assessor’s office had an entire part of their office that was state employees. Anyway, so we tried to do that. Oh my god.

[00:33:16]

We had people coming out of the woodwork because they wanted their little auditor thing. They wanted their administrator. They wanted their county superintendent, like Cathy Maloney runs the county schools, which could easily just be done in a consolidated way, but we’ve hung on to ‘em! And that’s ok, but we sure heard about it. [laughter] Everyone of those people had their huge support group. And we just decided we weren’t gonna touch that with a ten foot pole! [laughter] So anyway, that was the study commission. So then, when the commission was over in ‘06, I ran for my district. And by then, I probably had the best education for an out-of-towner. I’ve had other monikers besides out-of-towner, not being a Butte native! Let me think: do-gooder, transplant. Anyway! I think I should have a little badge. I’ve been here 23 years and I love this town. I chose to stay. I chose to live here.

But that was - I ran against two Butte natives. One lived right behind me. Mike Hogart lived right behind me. And then a gal ran. She was on Zarelda [street]. And I just, I’ll tell you what I busted my tail going door-to-door because I knew I was up against - and I did really well in the primary. And then Mike Hogart came in second. And I didn’t know then, but there’s not a huge difference in percentages from the primary in a local, in a district race. It would take an awful lot to make abig huge difference in that so I won my seat. I started out in ‘07, the first day of ‘07. And I’ve been doing it ever since. I think I was chairman between 2012 and 2016, and then I’m chairman again (for four years), I’m chairman again. So that’s the other thing that I’ve done in my career as a commissioner.

[00:35:29]

I’m up again next year.

Jaap: Are you gonna run again?

Shaw: [laughing] I don’t know. I figured if - well, you know what? Hey, I’m 73 and if I ran again next year, I’d be 75. It would be no worse than the last two presidents we’ve had so! [laughter] I think I’m a lot younger than I am. My tolerance and bounce-back level is a lot less than it used to be, but I don’t know. I do truly love what I do.

Jaap: Yeah, what do you like about being a commissioner? What, I mean -

Shaw: Well, when I started, I just wanted to help people. That’s what I did as an investigator. That’s what I did as a researcher, is to gather facts and try to get information. And my neighborhood was rough back then. And when I first moved to Butte, there was dog poop everywhere. There were dogs everywhere. And I had feral cats up by me. I had a trap and I trapped at least 30 orange tabbies. That’s how many that inter-mated and everything else, up on the hill behind me over three or four years. And anyway, so there were you know drug dealing going on and other things that sort of - I came from a little more civilized, in that way, area. We had recycling and that kind of thing, you know.

But I love Butte, despite all that. And I just wanted to help people. I still do. If I don't know an answer, I know who to call. I’ve gotten that over 15 years of doing this. I do love - I love being - I really enjoy being in the inside and being involved. It’s exciting. You know what that’s like, being in the Archives.

Jaap: Yeah.

Shaw: And just knowing what’s happening and a lot of things that people - I have to remind myself that a lot of people don’t have any idea what’s going on because they don’t see anything from the inside out and I often am asked many questions about things that are happening that I do have - that I can answer, you know, better. A lot of folks don’t know what we do, or they’re angry with the police department. But I have gained a huge respect for our department heads and what they do, and what this county does. We’ve had a few bad apples but it doesn’t matter. Every place has them.

[00:37:58]

It’s great living a block away. People know where I - I can run, can’t hide. [laughter] It’s like - So I kind of retired from other things, except I still do historical research. I still - I’m down to two little old ladies now; I don’t do trees anymore or anything like that. When I quit working with Monty - I just do gardens. I’m a perennial expert. I love trimming and pruning and cleaning gardens. And usually it’s some little old lady that can’t do it themselves anymore and they look out their window and it’s depressing. I get depressed looking at my own yard until I get working on it but it’s - I love to do that. And they’re so appreciative. It’s one of those jobs where you, come on - it can’t look worse. It can only look better. And I did forget to touch on the music part of my background.

Jaap: Yeah, talk about your music!

Shaw: Sorry, there’s a lot of layers here, but.

Jaap: No, it’s perfect.

Shaw: When I was 7, back in New Jersey - my parents - well I was in Maryland then. I got my first piano lessons. My parents bought a little spinet. And my dad was a violin player and he came from a very well known - my maiden name is Stiller. And the Stiller brothers were just hugely well known in Green Bay. They had a music store. They ran the - well Green Bay Packers - my grandfather had a music/photography store, first one in the State of Wisconsin. And they were the official photographers for the Packers from the 30s to the 70s.

Jaap: Really?

Shaw: Oh yeah. I got some memorabilia. I got it all because I’m the big Packer fan in my family. So anyway, the Stiller Company they called it. So I come from a background of music. They had a quartet that was really well known in Green Bay. My dad played the violin. And he also sang. He was a beautiful baritone singer. So anyway, they got a piano and back in the 50s, that’s what you did. Your kids learned how to play, you know, they took piano lessons. And I did. And I have a picture of me sitting in front of the piano in a little dress when I was probably about 8 or 9. It’s next to the one of me being this old and sitting at my keyboard. But that’s ok! [laughs] So I took lessons for maybe five years, and I took them from a concert pianist so I learned a lot of classical. And then of course, by then I’m in high school and didn’t want any part of it. But I kept playing. And I’m a sight reader. I don’t play by ear.

[00:40:33]

I was a closet player. I couldn’t stand playing in front of anybody. My dad would make me come out for the cocktail parties and I was so nervous. So then fast forward. I carried a piano with me everywhere I went. And when I met Bill in Oregon, in Springfield, I had a piano and I had just started going back to church. And a local nursing home asked me if I’d like to play some hymns. And I was like, I thought ok good lord I’ll try it. So I went. And I’ll tell you what. It was an epiphany because people in nursing homes - they’re usually very lonely. They don’t have any of the comforts that they had before really. They don’t have the network of friends and family. But mainly, they don’t have the music or entertainment that goes along with life. So I would play hymns and I’d mess up and get all tense, and they were all just ‘Yay!’ you know?

And they’re so happy to have anybody share music. Because music - it’s in the heart. It’s magical. I get a little teary-eyed talking about it. [pause] I played in Alzheimer’s wards. So fast-forward - I’ve been playing in nursing homes for 25 years. In Butte, I hit every one every month. So it’s five or six nursing homes, every month of the year. And lately I’ve been going to the memory wards because music is - it’s amazing what music can do. And that’s what music therapy is all about because that’s sort of a new cutting edge thing right now, music therapy.

[00:42:24]

But somebody finally figured it out. It’s simple. You sing. I just sing acapella. I don’t always play. I’ll go into a room and just sing something to somebody. It just brightens their hearts and their spirits. I’ve been hitting Mariposa, Big Sky and Footsteps at the old Vintage Suites. And they all have pianos and they’re in all different stages of being rough. People like to donate pianos to nursing homes thinking they’re doing a great service! [laughter] It’s like, oh my god, the foot pedals don’t work!

I was at Copper Ridge the other day and I’m like, ‘The foot pedals don’t work!’ It’s like, this is honky tonk now. It’s so weird to play a piano without the sustaining pedal. Oh my lord. Anyway! Well I love entertaining and I do have a couple of professional gigs. I used to have the Broadway [Cafe] every other Friday and the Art Walk, I played the Main Stope [Art Gallery]. To me music is cathartic, but my real true heart - you know I get the desires in my heart really when I play at these memory wards. Because people will - their mouths will start moving with the words. They’ll hum. And the people that are working there, they’re just amazed. They can’t believe how music is so touching and it brings back memories. People cry. They laugh, they dance. They start doing the toe tapping. It’s so cool! I just love it.

[00:43:52]

So I will do that till my dying day, until someone is playing for me probably in some nursing home. I have - anyhow music is - I love it. If you think about my hands, my eyes because I have to sight read, my ears I’m listening, and I’m singing. So just about every sense is engaged when I play. And it saved me through COVID. I’ll just say. Although I’m going through some huge anxieties with this situation right now. It’s been kind of rough the last couple of weeks. I think it’s post-pandemic stress. [laughs]

Grant: What is it? What’s going on?

Shaw: Well it’s just the last few weeks. And I know Karen Sullivan [BSB Health Department Director] went through this too. I’m on the Board of Health. That says it all in a word. And being on Council of course. It’s like an adrenaline rush in a fight or flight that you go through when you just have to do something no matter what. And being in local government I’m second in command and I’m also on the Board of Health and we went through all of that for 15 months. And you just do what you have to do to do it.

[00:45:02]

And then you take the good, the bad and the indifferent when it comes back to a political person, a government official. So things are better, but it’s like coming off an adrenaline rush or you’re - it’s like a big dump. And suddenly your body is saying, ok I can just fall apart. And it’s just crazy and it’s happening all over. I mean, a lot of people can’t figure out why they’re having panic attacks for just feeling stressed out. And you get the fear, the dread. You wake up in the morning and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, what’s going on today?’ The insecurity of not knowing what’s happening. And even though it’s so-called, it is better...you can do more things, you’re still in that kneejerk of ‘well do I wear a mask or do I not or am I gonna get it anyway?’

And then just - I’ve lost my sense of adventure. They call it risk aversion, like you don’t wanna anything that’s outside of your absolute comfort zone. And it’s part of this coming off of - it’s like being in combat, they say, it’s a lot like that. And I’ve had some past experiences where I’ve had a trauma of some kind. And I definitely have post-traumatic stress disorder, just from all my years of living. And one in particular just scared me so bad that I just took a long time to get over it. And so these triggers kind of bring that back. And everyone I talk to about this has said, ‘Cindi oh my god I know what you’re talking about.’ Because we can all relate in one way or another.

And then two of my brothers - I’m the second oldest in the family. My older brother died of cancer three months ago. And he had liver cancer and it was kind of self-inflicted a bit from early years of abuse and stuff. He got clean in his thirties and he made it to 76 but he suffered for five years in the Chicago area.

[00:47:13]

But Timmy, my baby brother, Tim, he died at 59. And he died two years ago right before COVID started. And he had cancer that he didn’t know he was sick and they opened him up and they gave him two weeks before Christmas. And he made it two months. And he was a famous, a very well known photographer and adventurer in Bozeman. Tim Stiller. Hazer is a good friend of his, or was. And I got to watch him die. It was horrible. So his last two months - this is just Tim - he said if anybody wants their picture taken - he was a professional photographer. ‘Come on down to my house.’ He has hospice. And he dressed up as best he could because his lower part was messed up. And he put on like a tuxedo top and you couldn’t see the rest of it. You had to know my brother Timmy.

And he took pictures and he left this legacy. Amazing.

Jaap: Yeah, that is amazing.

Shaw: So I have really not had a chance to grieve either brother. [pause]

Jaap: Yeah, everyone has kind of been in like a tight mode for the last year and a half.

Shaw: Oh gosh yeah. You can get through anything for a season. But it’s been a long season. And then on top of that I pulled a god damn groin muscle last year and it’s like what! Are you shittin’ me! [laughter] I’m serious! And I won’t tell you how I did it. Anyway, it’s like are you kidding me! You know? And ten months later, it’s much better but I must have pinched a nerve or something. And it made me just pissed. [laughter]

Jaap: Another thing.

Shaw: Another thing! It was like ‘what!’. I sound like a whiner but I’m not trying to.

[00:49:16]

So my daughter lives in Seattle, and I’m actually leaving Monday - I got some medication. I’m not getting on a place without something for this anxiety. And I went to counseling. Karen Sullivan gave me the name of someone great. So you know what? I can’t do it all myself. I just need to - and that’s a good thing. I know I’ll be fine. It’s just getting through it all. So my daughter Heather was a handful. Her dad died of a brain tumor when she was 25 I think. But they were both very close. It’s my only child. And she went through a lot during high school. She got into drugs. She got into trouble. And then at the age of 19, she completely turned her life around, god love her. She’s got her doctoral degree in history and she actually is the lead historian for HRA, Historic Research Associates. And she’s got a wonderful job. She didn’t have her kids until her thirties though, so she’s 52 with two teenagers. Ah! [laughter]

They’re 18 and 19. Ruby is 19 and Elena is 18. And Ruby turned 19 on the 19th of May so Ken and I drove to Seattle to have her birthday party. And she’s gay. And she’s a ‘they.’ And I can’t get my head quite wrapped around that, but I love her. She’s my apple of my eye. But she’s struggling, even in Seattle, which is very diverse and very understanding. You know, when the COVD hit, she was supposed to graduate from high school last year, at 18. She was supposed to have her birthday on the 19th of May. And she had to completely separate herself from her - she has a core group of friends that are very close knit, as you can imagine, that she has to have. And so she ended up in in-patient treatment, you know? And that was hard for me to have to deal with. She’s better but I think she’s gonna have to continue doing something.

[00:51:22]

Now Elena, she’s a flippy-haired cheerleader girl type. They’re only 16 months apart. They look like twins, except Ruby looks like a guy. It’s just amazing how children are. You have two?

Jaap: I have three.

Shaw: You have three, oh my god Aubrey you have three children. You know how different they are!

Jaap: Yeah, all different. Yeah.

Shaw: [laughter] My sister is a year and four days younger than me and we couldn’t be more different.

Jaap: It’s so bizarre. You grow up in the same…

Shaw: Oh my gosh. We slept in the same bed until I graduated from high school, because we had six kids you know. But anyway, so it’s been kind of rough but music really saves me. And I love what I do. Like what I was saying Clark, that comfort zone. So for me, this is work, it’s music, it’s gardening, and that’s pretty much it. I do have a guy. Ken Nabor he’s my sweetie. [laughter] I know! He’s my sweetie and we’ve been together eight years. In two weeks, it’ll be eight years we’ve been together.

[00:52:30]

And he worked for 44 years at the power company, god love him. He went through all the ups and downs. And he was a draftsman down at the bottom of the hill here, the division. He was married once for 2 years in the 80s. That was it! [laughs] And when we met, it was awesome and you know I was single and felt pretty independent. We’ve been together ever since. Now, I live in my neighborhood. I have to live in my neighborhood, it’s my home. But I do live with him at least half the time. And we have a great relationship. But his way of dealing with COVID is a little different than mine. He learned to stay away from me if he had any kind of like conspiracy theories. I was about ready to pop him one. But you know that really split people up unfortunately. Oh my god if my daughter knew that I voted for Trump, she would probably disown me as her mother. But that was…anyway. Not that I agree with him now.

But yeah it put a moniker like you had this big red light behind your head. But anyhow, so Ken wants to do everything now. Ok he bought a boat. His bucket list - he had a bucket list. So he bought a boat last year. He’s like, let’s go boating! And I’m like, ‘It doesn’t quite fit in my little comfort zone here.’ It gave me a panic attack, which is silly. It’s not silly. It’s not crazy. I’m not silly. I gotta keep telling myself, ‘Cindi, this is about you now. You need to get better and you need to just stay in that comfort zone until I get to a point where I can kind of do this.’

[00:54:13]

We bought a side-by-side together. We actually paid for it, and that I love. I mean that is a blast. So anyway, getting off of all that. But he’s a musician also. He’s been in bands since the 70s here in Butte. And he was in Eclipse. That was a big one in town. 40 West. I mean he’s got an entire - his basement is a sound room. And he does his own recording and he also has a practice room that is huge. It’s amazing. He’s an amazing bass player. The problem is - he’s a bandmate. I’m a soloist. [laughter] Clark knows what I’m talking about, probably!

Grant: For sure.

Shaw: He tried, ‘Oh honey let’s play together!’ Well he’s got this humongous - he’s got three keyboards but they’re all - they don’t have a bass line. You know what I mean? I play piano and keyboards, but he has these awesome keyboards that are for a bandmate. Plus I don’t play by ear. And I kept telling him - we did this for two years before I said ‘that’s it. If you really wanna stay with me, we can’t play together.’ I’m a sight reader, and so I really did try. I tried to memorize stuff at my age. It’s like, are you kidding me? That’s something I can just choose not to do. And I don’t know how many times I said, ‘Would you just give me the music?! Even just a few notes to get me started.’

But anyway, he’s an awesome musician. And Butte does not have music very much anymore. There are not too many venues that have music. When I started out, I was playing at Julian’s, played at the Broadway, I had a couple of other gigs. I went down to the Miner’s Hotel - I’m a lounge player. That’s maybe not their genre, but pretty much I’m like a Diana Krall type of music player, which is my genre. Ken’s like, ‘You could learn rock and roll.’ You know I love rock n’ roll, but I can choose a genre and I’m sticking with it. And that’s what I’ve done - I think it’s important that I stick with that just for myself. It brings me joy, what I do. So yeah, there just isn’t a lot of venues in Butte.

[00:56:30]

I think Mac’s does - they had the Platinum Street quartet and their quintet over there, but I miss that. I wish there was more stuff. But in the meantime, I play all the nursing homes. So I don’t know where did I leave off? Trying to think where to continue.

Jaap: Well, I have a question then.

Shaw: Of course! Please, give me a break.

Jaap: So, in the early 2000s - oh I hate this microphone! In the early 2000s, you were a big advocate - well you still are - but you were advocating for, to not demolish a couple of buildings. So like - I’m gonna name a scenario and then I’d like you to indulge me. So Neil Rodgers was one.

Shaw: Oh yes.

Jaap: He wanted to demolish a duplex and it was going to be a nice parking lot and there was going to be interpretation. And today it’s a weed lot, maybe a little parking lot I can’t quite tell. And there was another house on, I believe, Mercury Street. They wanted to tear down the building next to them and make a courtyard - the idea of keeping facades and streetscapes and today, that didn’t happen. That was frustrating to me just looking at that yesterday. Can you tell me - I’d just like you to talk about Butte and historic preservation and your take on how this community has handled historic preservation?

[00:57:56]

Shaw: I can do that. I’ll go right to Neil Rodgers first. I was on the - I wasn’t a commissioner then but I was with Butte CPR. And I was just passionate about not tearing buildings down. I didn’t come from a town that had historic buildings and there was no district - well there were buildings but I never - I didn’t connect at all with any of that before I moved here. So not only was Neil Rodgers building up, but we had three little cottages up here where the Apache Playground is, right across from the Original [mineyard]. They were just lettered A, B, and C. I don’t know if you remember that, but they were there, little miner’s cottages from way back when from the Original mine yard.

And I’m gonna name names. Jimmy Johnson was our Public Works Director at the time. And I can’t blame him - it was more ignorance than anything because we weren’t a [National Historic Landmark] district yet. Well, we weren’t doing preservation that much. Mark Reavis was the Historic Preservation Officer. He did his best. They also tore down a bunch of buildings by the airport, ah the airport - the heliport by St. James. So they didn’t come before - I wasn’t on council then so I digress. So the Neil Rodgers one was coming up and apparently that house had been the original location of a HAM radio aficionado of some sort that was in there. And he made himself famous and - there was a connection. Every house in Butte has a story. I call it not history but house-story. Housestory.

And there was a meeting. And it was a public meeting. It was in a building thought - it wasn’t like at the courthouse or anything. And I remember standing up and saying, you know, everybody is here to talk about what’s best for Dr. Rodgers, but there’s no one here to speak on behalf of this building. And I was really adamant about the preservation part and that it was gonna get torn down. I think Mark Reavis had - he liked to take what was left and try to make a memento out of it, which he did very successfully in some things, like right outside of here. Anyway, when they wanted to tear down the Mother Botego house, he said well let’s make a little memorial for her somewhere. Well anyway he was gonna do something - he was gonna create like a space with some of the bricks to show what was there before. Well of course, Neal Rodgers didn’t want any part of it. And he did say he was going to do something like keep a wall or something.

Jaap: Yeah it was like keep a wall.

Shaw: A wall or a facade or something. You’re really bringing back a memory. And it never happened.

Jaap: No, it didn’t.

[01:00:39]

Shaw: And then other things where people said they would turn something into a courtyard. It just turned into a - I know exactly where it was - a bed of weeds. There was one down on South Main Street, just south of Platinum Street where someone tore out a house and someone just left it. It’s just a weed pile. Then after - I stayed with Butte CPR for a while and then I became a commissioner. It was in ‘07 that we adopted our Comprehensive Plan, I think it was. And the very first thing out of the chute was the school down there.

Jaap: Longfellow?

Shaw: Longfellow. And they were gonna tear the Longfellow down and it actually was in - there are certain pockets of areas in downtown that were considered part of the historic district before they went clean down to Front Street. And that changed things - when we combined with Anaconda, I think there was a time in there where now all of Butte can be looked at in one way or another. But the Longfellow School was just a 1916 building that they build several of them in the same vernacular. And we tried - you know, the council tried to keep it from getting torn down. And then of course the vote went to tear it down. And there was something else in there where Osellos went and started tearing it down before they even had permission. And by then, the death knell of that building had sounded.

And at that time, we wanted to save the big concrete cornice at the top - and we were told by somebody at the county, I’m not sure who, probably Jimmy Johnson I’m not sure, that it was full of asbestos. [laughs] It’s concrete for Christ’s sake.

[01:02:26]

And we couldn’t even keep that as a memento. Like we have that concrete cornice that says ‘Montana’ by the library - that type of thing, just anything, just something. And I just remember how difficult it was to deal with. And at that time, Mary McCormick was on the other side. She was not our preservation officer - she was part of Butte CPR and others. And she’d come up to the microphone and she would pretty much tell us, like she does now, but she was mostly a citizen. She worked in the field, but. I’m trying to think of other ones that just broke my heart. You know, and then we had the Greek Cafe, which was the biggest debacle of all.

I had to ask [fellow commissioner] Bill Anderson the other day, ‘Tell me the chronology again on that. Oh my god stop. I just can’t take that much information.’ All the things that were going on - they got a grant and then Kujawa was gonna buy it.

Grant: Nick.

Shaw: Yeah, Nick was gonna buy it and he was gonna put a roof on it. And it just became one big frickin mess, you know? And we got a huge black eye over that of course. I’m just to think of another one in particular. There’s a lot of other smaller ones that just…we just - and demolition by neglect is one of my worst enemies. That just gets me. And the fact that we can’t really get our head wrapped around it because of property rights. People have rights. You can’t go in their building. You can only look at the facade, you know. There’s no right to go into somebody’s building. You can’t even do that with the Health Department, unless there’s literally raw sewage flying out of the house or feral cats running around in and out of a house, that we can ask to go inside a building. It’s very specific.

[01:04:14]

So yeah, I have a real heart for the buildings. I get really upset with people that let buildings fall down by neglect. The county is trying to - they put a vacant building ordinance together and a mothballing ordinance. But they don’t have a lot of teeth in them and you’re really preaching to the choir in a lot of ways. And it’s the people that are already trying to do something positive that you’re preaching to. There’s all kinds of loopholes to get through things, no matter how tight your ordinances are. People just get around them. They play a shell game and all that kind of stuff. And it’s distressing. I’ll just say it.

Jaap: Yeah, how about the buildings this year we’re losing?

Shaw: Oh, well. Where shall I begin? The Blue Range just breaks my heart. And my personal opinion is that it was on the chopping block from the start. You know, we have an ordinance now that has a little bit more teeth in it that requires that people at least try to get a buyer or that they mitigate. But there’s ways of getting around that. It got ugly and we’re on Zoom and what can I say? It was just agonizing. I don’t know how you prepare yourself, either as a local official or just a general John Q. Public - how do you prepare for things that do start falling down or get to a point where they can’t be recovered. The place around the corner from my house that the Wackerbarths bought, which was Jesse Wharton’s bridal home - it was built in 1882. So my house - I thought mine was the oldest, but that’s one of the oldest, that Italliande. It had good bones, I mean, the roof - everything was just pristine but it was a wreck.

Back in, let’s see, 2006 or 7, it came up on taxes and my husband and I decided to put an assignment on it. It’s where you pay all the taxes and all the fees and everything and if it’s not redeemed by a certain date by the owner, then you get it. And if it is redeemed, you get 10% on your money, which is like, ok! They give you back your money plus 10%. It was a screamin’ deal.

[01:06:46]

Well they did redeem it at the last minute. It had roof damage. It had water damage inside, but the people just - they weren’t even living there. It hadn’t been lived in since ‘95. So the fact that that building was bought by somebody and they put a bunch of money into it - they made money when they sold it. They sold it for, I think he said $285,000. Unbelievable amount of money. With a gorgeous view of the Original mine yard - it’s got a big picture window up on the second floor, of the east ridge. And two people from Bozeman bought it and they think they died and went to heaven, but there’s no parking. [laughs] So there’s a little part in the back by the alley.

So you know, I have seen things that I seriously didn’t think could possibly be resurrected, that have been. And it is all about money and a passion. People have to have a passion to do it. It’s not just your looking at some three dimensional thing that yeah, I’m gonna fix it up. And I loved - what I would do is, if I saw somebody new coming to town - and the parsonage right next to the Mountain View Methodist is one example - is I’d do all the research, you know me. I’d do it for free and I love doing it because it’s fun to find out about stuff. That’s all about research, right, is the discovery part is fascinating. And I would just hand it to them and say, here you go. This is your house. And it’s got a history and this is what it is. And they say, oh thank you so much. Or if I find a picture - I found a picture of a house on Platinum, on the west side, of a house from back in 1918 when it was built. And they were like, ‘Oh my god that’s why the fence looks like that.’ And ‘Oh they must have added on this.’ You know, to me that’s just so fascinating about Butte. Every house has a story to tell. And I don’t like it when things fall down, but it is just brick and mortar and if you wanna look at it just from a clinical perspective…

[01:08:44]

So the Blue Range - I still can’t get over that one. I still keep thinking that something can happen, but it’s private property and I have to be careful about that. Joe Lynch’s building - you know, the one that fell apart and we ended up having to put the fire out and because of that, it may or may not have done some damage on the building next door. We never came to a conclusion on that, but there are people like that. Martha Sorini - I love her to death but she is a slumlord in town and she never did much more than just making sure it met code, you know? And she’s on her last legs right now. I love Martha. She’s just a feisty little old lady. [laughter] I just love her. I wanna get to be just like her when I’m 98 or whatever she is.

I’m already getting there - feisty. So yeah, I don’t know, that’s kind of where I’m at. And because of my love for the history, it just comes right out. And my house is a good example. It went through a lot of different hands. Josiah Beck was the capitalist that built it. And he - we have a Beck Block on Park Street. I have a picture of him. And it was an investment and he sold it to Mr. Eltinge. Charles Eltinge was the correspondence clerk. And then…let’s see how it went…Billy Dalton, you know the story. He lived across the street in the little white wood frame across the street from my house. And his best friend was Charles Eltinge’s son. They became really close friends and Billy Dalton became Julian Eltinge, who was a famous cross dresser at the turn of the last century. And there is an Eltinge Theater on Broadway. Billy Dalton was ashamed of his dad. He was a barber that was a town drunk. And he took on the last name - he lived here in Butte until he was like 12 or 13. And then he moved to California and the rest of his life came about after that. That’s where we get Julian’s from. Some people came to town - they wanted to know about the history and they looked at my sign. They thought he lived in there, but he actually lived across the street. So yeah he became Julian Eltinge and then Julian’s came about after that. When Jim Kephart came to town, he talked to me about it and then he opened up the…

So that house started out that way, and then Bridget Shea and her husband bought the house in 1916 and her husband was a Teamster. He drove truck for probably a brewery I’m thinking. And she was a housewife with four little children. And I found out this story - I did meet some of her relatives, her grandchildren. And I didn’t get this story from them because I think they just brushed it under the table and didn’t really talk about it.

[01:12:07]

But James Shea - so it was Bridget Shea and her four children and James - he got into an altercation in 1917 with a Cornishman in a bar about noon. And he came home and he put on his IRA uniform and he put it underneath his jacket. And he went back to the bar and the Cornishman pulled a knife. And there was an altercation. And James claimed it was self-defense but he stabbed this man and he died, bled to death on the sidewalk in front of this bar. It was just on Main Street. He went to jail. He went to prison. And then he died in 1918 of the Spanish Flu. And he left Bridget with four children. And I did a lot of research on this and I did talk to one granddaughter, Carol Berger, who just passed away. She came knocking on the door one day and said, ‘You know, my nanna lived here.’ I loved talking to the relatives. And a couple of other ones did too - they came to visit me.

And anyway, she never told me the story. I didn’t ask or anything about any of that stuff, but that’s what happened. So Bridget went on to become a Business Agent for the Women’s Protective Union, and she did that for, I wanna say 25 years I think, till 1955 when she passed away. I’ve heard so many stories about her marching into a building, into a restaurant where they had bucket girls or where they had waitresses or whatever a woman was doing at the time, a laundress. And she would just get right in the - you know, tap the guy on the chest with her finger and tell them that they needed to follow the law. These are union girls. She walked everywhere or took the bus.

[01:13:54]

And then Matt’s Diner, I guess - what was the older lady who owned it, her name - she lived until 102 I think. Can’t think of her name offhand. Anyway, she told me a story about Bridget coming in. And at that time, the old lady that owned Matt’s worked there. And she bought it from the owner in the 50s or whatever. So Bridget walked in and she was wearing her little black dress. She didn’t wear anything but black. And she walked right up to the owner and she chased him with a broom I think, honestly, because he was not following the law. She was amazing. And they have a - is it the Daughters of the Hibernians - what’s the women’s version of the Order of the Hibernians? Can’t remember - there’s a women’s version and it’s named after Bridget Shea. So yeah, she was amazing.

And my house stayed in the family. So when she passed away, one of her sons, Dennis Shea, he lived there until the 70s, so it was in the same family for a long time. And I think that’s why it still had such good bones. But anyway, that was Bridget. And I have a picture of her and her family on my front porch and I feel like her spirit is still there. I don’t believe I own that house. When you have a house that old, I am a steward - I am totally a steward of that home. I just wanna make sure it goes on and on and on. It’s the only house left on the whole block. Everything else is burned down, torn down or fallen down. I’m the only house left on that whole corner, except the Mountain View Methodist. Anyway, any more questions?

[01:15:36]

Jaap: Clark, do you have questions?

Grant: You have till 12:30?

Shaw: Oh! Oh my goodness it’s almost that time.

Grant: Yeah, ok I’m gonna have to be selective.

Shaw: Ok.

Grant: Can you tell us more about the experience of being a single mother?

Shaw: Sure. Yeah I could, because I had to work and I was 21 when I had my daughter and I was in my thirties when my daughter - you know I mean she - there’s 15 or 20 years difference in being a mom and your children. Let’s just say. Um…I had to work. I had to depend on heather to be independent. I wasn’t home a lot, I guess, because of that. She got involved with the wrong crowd and I remember getting calls from the school saying Heather’s out in the play-yard and they’re having a fight or something. It was tough being a single mom, to be honest, but Heather graduated at the age of 16.

She was very smart and moved - you know, back in the 70s they moved you up a grade or two. So she grew up being a 15 year old with 17 year old classmates. And it had a lot to do with - I would never do that again as long as I live you know, because it’s just hard socially and emotionally and everything else. So when she graduated from high school at 16, she went to live with her dad in California. So I was a single mom for a while but, well I shouldn’t say a while because Heather was only 11 when I got divorced, so seven years, five years, six years.

[01:17:21]

It’s tough. I worked all kinds of jobs because I really didn't have a career at the time. And I didn’t go back to school until I was 39, so that was quite a bit later. You know, just try to make ends meet. I did everything from gardening to cleaning bathrooms to cleaning houses to - well I got in a little gardening business. Gosh I’m trying to remember back before I became a paralegal what I even did. [laughs] I always worked though. And I managed to make ends meet, so that worked out pretty good. I don’t know what else to say about it.

Grant: Sounds challenging. Yeah.

Shaw: Yeah, I do tell me daughter all the time though - she’ll say, “Mom, I just don’t know what to do.” This is when Elena was a little stinker. “Elena’s just - I don’t know what to do.” Oh, you don’t know what to do huh? Hmm. Well figure it out! It’s like, ‘Ok! I knew this time would come around when she’ll say ‘mom I know just exactly what I put you through.’’ Or things like that. Well I got divorced - I’ve been married three times and Heather divorced her kids’ dad and that was an epiphany for her. She’s like, ‘Oh my god mommy I know exactly what you went through.’ Because she was mad at me for a long time. She thought I broke up with her dad, you know? She was ruthless. She was just pissed all the time. And it hurt, you know, but it took a while and she got to feel what it was like. It’s difficult. But anyway.

Grant: Jumping around - [how about] some legislative accomplishments that you’re proud of from your time on the Council, which has been what, 14 years?

Shaw: Yeah this is my 15th and I’ll do 16 to complete this last term. So thank you for reminding me about the fireworks. So in ‘07 when I became a commissioner - my district is close-knit, 30-foot lots, everything is stacked together, and it was also like the hub of fireworks, the M, the whole area around there, the Anselmo mine yard - everything was just like Beirut, you know?

[01:19:46]

I had experiences just living - I had to worry about people shooting fireworks because my house, the roof goes right into the ground. You can just step right onto my roof. That’s how steep it is, Nanny Goat Hill we call it. So people would shoot fireworks that would land on my roof. They didn’t have to go up. They just came down, you know! So anyway, I do have more than - I can give you more than 12:30, we’re good.

So I had people writing me. I was brand new. They finally had a commissioner who might wanna do something. The probably had others. Well I looked at the ordinance and well, there was no ordinance. We didn’t have a fireworks ordinance. We had a firearms ordinance, but no fireworks ordinance. Because back in the day when they consolidated, they went with the county where you could shoot them off anywhere, anytime you wanted to. And the city did have limits, when it was city limits, and it was pretty much like what we have now. I don’t think they even had them at all. You had to go down to the county to have fireworks. So I decided to tackle it. And I was on the Judiciary Committee at the time I think - that was one of the committees I was put on.

So I had - the county attorney was Bob McCarthy back then. And I just took, made a simple draft and put it together and I knew that I would never get a full-blown no fireworks - and there were towns that had one - they just had one big boom like we do up on the M you know. So I decided to take the dates that you could buy them. And that’s what the days are now - and that’s the reasoning behind it was: the days you could buy the fireworks so that they didn’t lose their revenue, that you could have fireworks. And then we added on New Year’s Eve, the 24-hour period from New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day. Anyway, I put it in there and it went through Judiciary - it takes about 6 weeks at least to get through anything brand new. And there was a lot of opposition, people sending me pictures of fireworks and you know, whatever.

[01:21:50]

And Dan Foley sat next to me [in council chambers]. I was on the corner, like where Michele’s at [Shea], and I called him my elbow mate because I’m a lefty, so we’re bumping elbows. It passed, barely. 7-5. And when we passed it, Foley took this picture and he shoved it over by me - we had kind of a love-hate relationship. And it said, you’ll never take my fireworks out of my cold dead hands, or something silly like that you know. [laughter] But to me, just starting out, it was nerve-wracking and pretty scary to try to do something like that, but I accomplished it. And very few people complained, and if they did, they got used to the idea. And I had a lot of folks that were happy that I did do that, so that stands out in my mind because we never did have anything like that.

The Consent Decree, I mean - I don’t wanna belabor that one but I tried to be educated and it was really difficult. There was a lot a lot to that. But I had to deal with a lot of detractors. Fritz Daily was the biggest one and just would not stop. And others that just had their opinions of course, and we’re all entitled to that. But I tried to educate my fellow commissioners. It seemed like, you know every two years we - I always say we recycle six of our council members. They’re either re-elected or they retire or they’re, you know, voted out. I really pride myself in being a mentor to commissioners. That’s one of my things that I just - it’s a natural instinct of wanting to help people I guess you’d say. And so the Consent Decree - I just felt like I wanted to be there to answer questions from not only constituents, but my fellow commissioners. That was a big one, to be a part of that, to be honest.

[01:24:05]

I was a part of this building [the Archives], which I was so just ecstatic about. And that was kind of a no-brainer but we had, what, a $7 million -

Jaap: 7.5

Shaw: A $7.5 million dollar bond to pass, and a lot of people aren’t automatically historic advocates or nuts like I am. So I had to keep remembering that that’s the way that was. And I fully supported anything Ellen ever did, and I know she appreciates it. That was a big one. I wasn’t on board when they did the jail. That was like a year or two before I started. As far as other accomplishments, like I said, as a chairman four times and now at least two more, I really devote myself to just being there for my fellow commissioners. And this time around, this last, we have - this will never get to the paper right? I have four 2-year olds and 3 newborns. I’m just calling them that. [laughter] I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. You know? I say that with all due respect of course. The three newborns can’t help it. They are brand new. And some of them, you know - so they’re all different. And I hate to say it, but certain people come in and they are like, ‘Oh my god what did I get myself into?’

They have no idea the amount of time that’s involved if you really wanna do the job right. And I do it full time because I want to. I don’t have to but I want to, and because of that, I think I’ve gained some respect in that regard. Plus, I have an incredible institutional knowledge! [laughter] As long as I don’t lose my memory. Yeah so, the four new people, the four two-year-olds I call them - they’re starting their third year - they’ve got some information under their belt but they don’t go back as far as maybe like something we did four years ago or even two years ago. And the three newbies didn’t get involved in any of the Consent Decree - I don’t know if they know anything about any of the things that we did. There’s a level of knowledge and trying to get people educated about stuff.

[01:26:27]

I don’t think about other accomplishments, but I will the minute I live here. I’m involved in a lot of committees. I’m on the Board of Health. I’m on the LAPC, Local Emergency Planning Commission, which I haven’t been to a meeting in a while. I am involved with the Zero to Five Coalition, which has to do with children, preschool children, mainly as a liaison with the council, so if there are things that come up, like that business with the Spirit group [addiction recovery home] trying to do down there in the lower west side - it would have affected foster care. So you know, that’s the kind of thing I try to lend my experience to and people - they respect my opinion. I don’t get people to try to go my way on council, but I know it’s a appreciated when I’m on a board that I can kind of act as a liaison with council. So that’s just one of my many hats.

Grant: You’ve contributed so much over the years. What compels you to wanna be involved in government?

Shaw: Oh gosh, what compels me. Well, I love to see results on projects. That to me, that’s sort of like the end part of it I suppose. If I get my teeth sunk into something that I think is important to this county and to the city - and I’m not just an Uptown girl, but I pretty much am because the master plan is big on my plate. I wanna see - I just wanna see this town grow and prosper. I don’t wanna see a lot of growth. I’d like to see it incrementally done so we can all enjoy it but also not stuck in a rut or don’t have shopping or whatever thing that you don’t like about Butte. That keeps me motivated and I hate to say it, but with COVID I think of two things that I really consider to be positive outcomes from COVID. Number one, I have not had a cold in two and a half years. Honest to god. I know the secret now! No hand shaking and hugging and, you know, seriously. And the second one is that we’ve kind of been discovered in a lot of ways. You know, I’m sure it’s gonna taper off, to some degree, but I think that people, a lot of folks in the whole state are reassessing their values and what they feel is gonna make them comfortable. And I kind of see Montana as an open place to go to and kind of a clean slate.

Because of that, there are things going on that are coming into town that I think are gonna be good. To get all the things we want, like shopping and retail and extraneous things, you have to have the population. It’s not that people don’t want to come to Butte. They’re waiting with baited breath, you know, to have Butte get the demographics that they’re looking for to come here and to have a successful business. The movie company that’s come in and things like that. I think those are exciting.

[01:29:56]

So to answer your question Clark, what keeps me going is - if I wake up in the morning and I’m thinking ‘I have an Exchange Club meeting today. Alright, and we got so-and-so.’ And I’ve been on that for quite a while. Or I got a Board of Health meeting and we’re gonna go over some contracts that the Council has to approve. I love the fact that I am a liaison - that’s the reason I’m on there. They need a council member because they’re so driven with contracts that they have to have a lot of things. And I’m able to answer questions. I love hanging out at the courthouse. I know it’s crazy but that is one of my comfort zones. I have such a network of friends and cohorts and fellow county people. I really enjoy that too. It gets me up in the morning, honestly. It gives me a focus. Now right now, with this anxiety thing, I’m trying to limit that, but it’s kind of hard to do so anyway.

Grant: Well, you touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to ask about the structure itself. And in doing so, I have to admit that I have screamed at many a meeting, as a listener. Just the level of discourse sometimes is so lacking, because people are so new and the job is so demanding but doesn’t really provide the pay required to spend that much time if they’re working also. I don’t know. I’m worried I guess that the council gets in the way of Butte’s progress sometimes because the process of being on the council is one of ongoing education for all these people who join.

Shaw: Yeah, we’re their voice and we represent the community.

Grant: Yeah, and so do you have in mind any structural modifications that can be made or other improvements - you know what I mean? Do you ever consider that?

[01:31:50]

Shaw: I do. I do know what you mean. I don’t know of anything we can do about it. But first of all I think, when you have 7 out of 12, which is a majority of council, in different levels of newness, I’ll just call that, I can see people - they have lives, they have wives, they have children, they have work. They come maybe right after work to a council meeting and I don’t think they realize how much is involved. And they’re probably conscientious enough do wanna do a good job, but they’re maybe overwhelmed by it all. And the things that go in between that - we get our council agenda on a Friday. Like today, I set the agenda on Friday afternoon. Between that and Wednesday, there’s not a whole lot of time. You got a weekend, where you probably don’t wanna work.

We used to get our agenda on a Monday before a Wednesday, but I had that changed when I became council chair. Fuck that, you know! God, you gotta be kidding me. You want us to read it and do research and then have some kind of a possible opinion on anything! Yeah, so they changed that. So we do get it on Friday and there’s not a lot of time. I do ask people to please do their homework before they come to council. There’s nothing worse than blindsiding a department head, or you can ask them to please be sure they’re there because if they’re not, you’re bound to have a question. And that doesn’t look good on the executive side. So we have rules of order and business, and we have changed some things in there, particularly that Monday to a Friday.

We have to be transparent, you know, we can’t have private meetings. We have to be careful about - we can’t just bring up anything at a council meeting. There’s no limit on how long you can talk - I’m just saying - I had that discussion last Wednesday night with Eileen [Joyce, county attorney]. I’m gonna just talk to John Ray personally and just say, ‘John, I love to hear your eloquent voice, and you are so well-spoken.’ I said, ‘Do you really want our Clerk and Recorder to read your letter monotone into the record?’

[01:33:59]

And I’m hoping he’ll realize how long those letters are. But we can’t - if he has to do it himself, you know? And I meant it. He’s a lot more interesting to listen to if he’s reading something into the record. But we can not limit the length of a letter, unless it’s like - you can’t read a book, you know. But his one letter Wednesday night was 15 minutes long.

Grant: Six pages I think.

Shaw: It was a long one - Ed Banderob used to give us long ones and he’d read them twice or - he’d send them and then he’d read them -we have no recourse there. You can ask politely for a three-minute limit in the -

Grant: Public comment…

Shaw: Just, you know the meeting being long - to try to keep things running. If you go to Bozeman to any public comment meeting, there’s a line out the door and they’ll just talk as long as they want. So there’s no law against that, but what Eileen suggested was - and I can ask John - is that is he gives us something, and this is an example of the kind of things we do, and that I do as chairman - if he gives us something online already and then we post it on the website so that the public can see it - he will be all over me because he knows the law and he is really into being able to do what he feels he’s entitled to do, which you know.

So if that’s one of your complaints, I totally agree, and if he only could see - I think if John stood there and he saw the rolling of the eyes, and the sleeping Bill [Anderson]…you know? Seriously! If he saw that, he might get… Plus, he knows that we’re really not taking it in. And I don’t know - it could be put on the record in a file. So it’s there forever, but anyway, that’s one thing.

[01:35:59]

And when I became chairman the last time when we had regular meetings, I had some new people that were literally fighting with each other - I had two gals that were like catfighting all the time - it was horrible. And I had to finally get between them and say, ‘Look. We are the face of this town and we cannot be doing this.’ We were just going on live TV and everything and I just had to remind everyone that they can see you rolling your eyes. They can see you going [exasperated gasp], you know, and all the body language is so important in a public meeting. So I sent out a pretty scathing email about that I think that stopped. For people to argue on the council floor - we can gavel down anybody as the presiding officer, the chair. And it’s been done. There’s certain things we do not allow. You can’t swear. You can’t threaten. You know, decorum is important. And there is a matter of opinion on decorum unfortunately. And I’m sure you’ve seen other chief executives even, maybe with their own issues with decorum, including the current one, out of frustration or whatever. So I know what you’re saying. If we all could have our homework done and could be concise -

Grant: But you can’t really expect that of them.

Shaw: You can’t. And the other - the key here is we are elected officials. We’ve been elected by our districts and our constituents and the city itself. And unless we do something that’s not acceptable, we have the right to do that without anyone saying, ‘Would you wrap it up!’ I will never forget that one as long as I live. Did you - you heard about that. ‘Uh Bill, do you think you could wrap it up?’ For once, Bill stopped talking. [laughter] Anyway! In a word, that can’t be done and JP [Gallagher] does like to kind of control council. He’s gonna have to be careful about that. I haven’t had a chit-chat with him about it. We do talk every Wednesday morning about the agenda. And I’m all about helping him learn the ropes. There’s no point in hamstringing anybody. I would never do that anyways.

And I’m always open to suggestion. If somebody says, ‘This is just how I see what’s happening.’ And it would just reinforce my energy to just try to change something, or talk individually to somebody. Now Justin Fortune - he doesn’t address me properly. And he’s already been told by his two elbow mates on either side, you have to address - when you answer a question, you have to go through the chair. And that is just sort of a getting-used-to-the-whole-thing. And when I told him, he said, ‘Oh yeah everyone keeps telling me that.’ I said, ‘Well you’re a smart boy. I think you can figure it out.’ When I call on you, you say ‘thank you madame chair.’ You know? You don’t just start talking. Those are little things. I don’t know if there’s a specific thing that you can think of.

Grant: Yeah. I guess I wanted to just reiterate that it is not you who fails to do homework and come prepared. And that’s clear, from observing the meetings for years as I have. But you know, it frustrates me, or saddens me, to seemingly see people come in cold to a meeting and are unaware of the procedures. I’ve wondered if there’s an orientation process? Do they get a flowchart of the county organization and procedural matters like what you were just describing?

Shaw: You mean like some training?

Grant: Yeah. Is there a training program for new commissioners, so it’s not just…

Shaw: There is and I haven’t done it yet. But there is a - out of Bozeman we have Dan Clark. And he has come before us. He came before us when there was a question about a City Manager and he gave us some statistics. And there is a training thing and I know. Here it is June already. But I think that when the four two-year-olds came on board two years ago, Morgan had them go through some - you could or you didn’t have to, and a lot of people don’t. They don’t do it.

Grant: Right, and that’s clear.

Shaw: So there is, but again, there’s no requirement. And you can get this - there is something online they can read that talks mainly about sunshine laws, you know, Freedom of Information and some of - a lot of legal stuff that we have to be careful about, not texting during a meeting or creating a quorum, that kind of stuff. But as far as not wanting to blindside anyone or want to grandstand, I’ll use that word, there’s no law against that. And it’s done, sometimes by some people purposely to attract attention to themselves - and this is just politics - or to call someone on the carpet and put them on a defensive. And there’s no - well unless somebody gets angry with a person and you can call a point of order and say, ‘Look, this is just not - you’re off point.’

[01:41:11]

And I’ve done that a few times where they start rambling on about something else. ‘Well excuse me, but we need to stay on point. And this is the agenda item. And we really can’t talk about this other item because it’s not - the public doesn’t know we’re talking about this other thing.’ Unless it is closely, you know, related. But those things can be done. I hate to be a naysayer about it, but there’s not a whole lot that can be done. And the training part is good, but again, I had Michele Shea and Dan Olson go. And they were just perfect. They hardly needed the training but they wanted to be trained. And so you get people that became better commissioners because they wanted to. Others that are on the council - they’re young and maybe are overwhelmed by it. I don’t know - Justin - I’m still trying to put my finger on Justin because he doesn't’ talk. And when he does, he whispers. And he is involved in a couple of big things right now. The solar panel issue going before the Zoning Board next week. And then he had the battery storage before that.

And he represents the district so - and I know he’s been inundated. I think maybe he’s possibly overwhelmed. He looks like he’s overwhelmed. And maybe he had no clue what he was getting into.

Grant: Is there a conflict of interest policy, speaking of him?

Shaw: Well, there is. And he cannot - and this is a really tough one because you’re elected by the electorate to represent them. And unless you really - I think the law is pretty strict about [it] - if you personally have monetary gain by voting on something, that could be construed as a conflict. But more paramount to that is you are representing the district. And if you’re constantly recusing yourself, you’re not really representing your district. And really if you just feel like it’s the appearance of impropriety. And that’s widely explained or…

Grant: Understood…

Shaw: Yeah. Everybody has their own opinion on what that might mean. But it’s more of a monetary gain. I know Sorich would do it all the time because he worked for NorthWestern [Energy]. I’m like, ‘John! You don’t have to recuse yourself because we wanna sign and MOU with Northwestern to put their building up!’ But he told me that his boss at Northwestern told him that he could not have even a sense of impropriety. So there’s a - you wouldn’t even think about that, but that had come up, so.

[01:43:58]

I wish I could give you a better answer.

Grant: No, it’s fine.

Shaw: And Justin [Fortune], a couple of times on council - and I heard in the Public Works Committee - he was asking questions about bid openings and I thought ‘you know…’ He was talked to about that. Eileen Joyce talked to him about it. He didn't know. It was just inappropriate, bringing up his business [Fortune Construction] and making it sound like he had some gain by it. You know, ‘why do we give it to them and not to somebody…’ It was something along that line, I believe.

Grant: In a meeting, I recall him saying, ‘Well we were gonna bid on that job.’

Shaw: Oh yeah. Uhhhh! He was talked to about that, and yeah. I had a feeling that it might happen just because of the business that we’re in.

Grant: I mean, do you enjoy these - it’s just one long series of conflicts it seems like, you know, government. Do you enjoy that?

Shaw: I - you know what? I call them adventures. [laughter] And if you don’t look at it that way, then you’ll wanna [makes motion like shooting in one’s head] blow your brains out. I’m just saying. Yeah I think of them as adventures. I mean, I had a guy stealing drugs right down below my house and he brought a bunch of junk cars in and - right above the mansion. I’m right between the mansion. And I’m thinking, Cindi…first I eyeball him. And I know him. He knows me. I turned him in on some parking tickets and he made some comment to somebody at the courthouse, you know, about me. I thought ‘whatever.’

We are held to a much higher level of - the political…people in politics and council members are held to a higher level of abuse, like verbal abuse or whatever because that’s what we do. But on the flipside, if somebody threatens a politician, like menaces or threatens harm, it goes to the complete opposite way, that we are protected. So anyway, with this guy down below me, he knew that I had turned him in and he made some snarky remark to someone in motor vehicles. And I just got on the phone, once I heard that, and was like, ‘Ok, Community Enrichment, come on down.’ They gave him tickets. They told him he had to haul two cars out of there. They told him he could not work on cars - the right of way was not his personal auto mechanic shop. And he apologized and you know what? I still let him know I live by myself up here. And he hasn’t quite left yet but he’s not working on cars and - he probably doesn’t know where to take them. He had them down by the library for a while. And then before that, they sat for four months at the bottom of Quartz and Montana down by the Christian Science building - that red rust bucket that was sitting there? Yeah, same guy. I think he might have mental issues.

[01:46:54]

So I’ve learned to get really thick skin. I know where my limits are. Luckily, I know who to call if there is a problem. And if I can look in the mirror in the morning and say, ‘Cindi, you fucked up, but you know what? You did the best you could do with what you had.’ And if people don’t call me and tell me - I’ll just wrap it up with this if that’s alright - if people don’t call me and tell me what they think, and ask me to please vote a certain way or whatever or find out my opinion on something - I am not a mind reader. And here’s the perfect example.

Liz Fitzpatrick, who lives in my district - she did not want something to go - it was with the police getting a raise or something, I forget. She calls about a lot of things. And I said, ‘Liz,’ I said, ‘you’re preaching to the choir. I will not - I am not voting that way.’ And I don’t usually say that because I learned the hard way not to ever tell people how you’re voting, because something can change. And it was happening that night, and I said, ‘You got it.’ She said, ‘Ok.’ She said, ‘Thank you Cindi. I really appreciate your representation.’

I voted against it but it got voted in, so I was in the minority. The next morning… ‘Cindi! Why did - what happened last night? How come it got passed?’ ‘Liz,’ I said, ‘I told you I’d vote against it.’ She said, ‘Well you didn’t do a very good job of convincing your fellow commissioners to vote against it!’ And I thought - O. M. G.

How in the world am I gonna do something like - she was so pissed she said, ‘I’m never voting for you again and you did a horrible job of convincing your fellow commissioners!’ Or they’ll call me the next day and say ‘why did I vote that way.’ And I’ll say, ‘You never called me! I had to vote on the seat of my pants because I didn’t get one single phone call.’ So yeah, that is a frustration, but anyway. But if I did the best I could, then…

Grant: Do you have time for two more?

Shaw: I do. [laughter] Oh yeah, we’re good.

Grant: One - and this is an issue that’s near and dear to my heart of course but - vacancy uptown, you know, in the central business district, and efforts to revitalize the uptown have been going on since the 70s, if not before. And I think there are some success stories obviously, but there’s still so much vacancy uptown. I just wanna get your take on that. Why is that? What can be done about it? What’s your opinion?

Shaw: It is frustrating and it’s sad because, you know, I can walk from my house and see all the places that aren’t there anymore. Hennessey Market was one that I loved. Just empty buildings. People that have come and gone and they try to make a mark and they just couldn’t make it work. Then we have people - I adore Jeff Francis, don’t get me wrong - but he bought 12 buildings 20 years ago, maybe not quite 20. And he was hoping for a big change in the community and he figured that he’d wait and see and do the minimal amount of repairs. He did let some of us - I used to be a tour guide. I forgot to tell you that, well, dress in costume. I have an entire room in my music room with my costumes on mannequins. [laughs]

Anyway, he let a bunch of us borrow - he owns the old Donut Seed and he’s got Old Butte Historical Adventures. That building was so much fun to work in. We had the guy that owns the jail who would open that up for tours, so some of that stuff was being used but I don’t think - nobody’s bought them up. And after all these years, it makes you wonder if they will. There’s a lot of work involved in restoring this stuff. The vacancies bother me. I know the Archives put awesome pictures in the windows. That was such a nice step ahead, to be honest. People aren’t just looking in on crap, you know, that people left behind in windows with no curtains.

[01:50:59]

I do see infill. I think that infill is happening maybe on a small scale. People love uptown. It’s not like they don’t love coming up here and they just are like gaga over the buildings and the views and everything else that goes along with it. I just don’t know what’s gonna happen with vacant buildings. People have to preserve them, have to take more responsibility to keep them from falling down and running down. And again, we can’t go inside and a lot of times things happen and we don’t - until somebody goes in there and sees the extent of damage that it’s just not gonna happen. I don’t know if that - I’m frustrated and I worry about it, yes.

Grant: How can we compel Jeff Francis to divest, as a government?

Shaw: Um, we can’t. Again, private property. If he pays his taxes - and I do think the mothballing he has done - I don’t think there’s any…if there’s a broken window he’ll fix it, but…I look at the Exer-dance as the perfect example. It was the worst mothballing I ever saw. It just looked horrible. And that building was the Shiner’s Furniture store. It was the coolest building in town, honestly, I think. And somebody did buy it, so - yeah I don’t think we can compel, to answer that direct question. We can’t.

[01:52:32]

We have a registry, which is also - keeps the honest person honest - for vacant buildings, where they pay. We have to at least know how to get a hold of you. That was the primary thing of that registry because if they pay their taxes, but the tax bill might say PO Box something or some LLC and you don’t know how to get - there’s no phone number. You don’t know how to immediately contact somebody if there’s something, a fire, just saying. We had to have a registry for vacant buildings so that we have a way of contacting folks. Yeah, I think Jeff is gonna be around, so.

Grant: And my final question - I was hoping you could give us some perspective on the COVID experience for members of the Board of Health. What was that like?

Shaw: Well, Karen [Sullivan] and I are pretty close, and I know it was really hard on her. And I do believe she’s going to - she even said in a meeting, not to the public, that she probably will retire some time soon. And that’s just you know, going on the record of course. I don’t really talk - so we’ve got several doctors. We’ve got Dr. Cornell. He’s a physician. We’ve got Dr. Richards, who’s a dentist. And then we’ve got Mike Welker, who’s a chiropractor. I think that’s everybody - and then we have our nurse Karen Mulockney is our main RN at the Health Department.

So they’re all in the medical field - and then there’s a gal that - Lynn Ankleman - she’s with the social services. So myself and - my god I can’t believe I can’t remember her name - anyway, another gal that works - she’s a Tech professor. So we’re really not in the medical field. So the medical field people, it kind of gave them a way to kind of decompress by being on the Board of Health, so they could be a part of it. And I’m sure they have their own issues, naturally, I’m not saying that they weren’t affected in any way. The pressure was maybe a little less on them because they're in the medical field and people just expect the medical field is gonna go with the science, you know. But Karen, being our Director - and she also was - she drafted all the directives that we had to follow, and a lot of people don’t realize that we just follow the state. We didn’t make up any of our own rules. It was state rules, but then we could make them more restrictive and the only time we did that was when we extended the directives a little longer, until we felt that - because as a local government, we have our fingers on that much better than the state would have them, with what’s going on locally.

[01:55:16]

And so we did extend some of those, just out of complete - you know, just trying to be as responsible and conservative as possible. And look at - I think we did a great job of doing it, personally. So I know she’s gone through kind of the same thing I did. And then me being on the board but being the face of the community, also got kind of called on the carpet a bit. It was hard. It was agonizing to have people come in from the very beginning from restaurants almost in tears saying, ‘You can’t close us down.’ That’s when we shut things down. And some people were prepared and others were hand to mouth.

I’m also on the BLDC, which is our Butte Local Development Corporation, and we came up with some emergency short-term loans that were zero interest to help folks out. Yeah, that was stressful too for me, now that I think about it. And watching people cry and actually shut their businesses, which was tough. And maybe it would have been worse if we hadn’t have done what we did, but I would think it would have been worse and it would have lasted longer, personally. I mean, we weren’t ground zero like Seattle. They still have everything separated. It’s better, but not - it’s like us three months ago, still because they were ground zero. It was horrible. Yeah I hope that answers your question.

Grant: Yeah. Sounds stressful, but maybe rewarding?

Shaw: Oh yeah, we felt rewarded. We felt - we did have people, a lot of people, thanking us so much for what we do. And especially groups, corporations, groups of people that really wanted to thank us for, even though they felt infringed on or their business had to come to a lot slower pace, that were were doing the right thing. Validating. I guess that’s the key word. We felt very validated in most cases. And the squeaky wheels, it’s like the Fritz Dailys of the world, you know, they’ll always be there but they’re always the squeaky wheel. Every other day I get - I don’t dare block him because I think Sorich said he blocked him and Fritz came unglued. ‘Hey, you blocked me! I can tell you blocked me!’ It’s like whatever.

I just delete. Anyway. Validation! [laughter] I’m sorry. I have my moments. So yeah validation, it was good. I think - I did not vote for this bribing people with money [to get vaccinated], but that was just my opinion about the money, giving money out for people to get vaccinated. But you know, we got someone willing to throw money at it and we got the CARES Act money so it wasn’t tax money, although you know taxes are paid by everybody, whether they’re federal, state, or local. So yeah, I think the vaccine program is a good one, and I’m hoping that it brings more younger folks to getting vaccinated.

We’ve maintained our numbers. We’ve had a few come up, but it’s still less than one - I don’t know how that works but they divide it by seven or whatever that fraction gets to be when you divide it by weekly, a weekly tally of new cases. It broke my heart, the nursing homes being that - that’s one of my really…happiest things I do is entertain. It broke my heart to see them passing on. I lost several of my friends. And that was really hard.

I also tried to - on the music side - I didn’t have a gig so I practiced for an entire year. And my muscle memory and my ability increased immensely, because I practiced every day. And I went through all the books. I’m a sight reader. I went through all my books and I have little sticky notes on the ones I can do. And I went to all the ones that I don’t do and made myself at least try. And then I took the $2000 that I would have spent on vacations last year and I found an ad in the newspaper from Helena for a baby grand. And I took my dining room table out of my house and I put a baby grand in there. 1926 Wurlitzer baby grand, a little baby, 5’2’’. About the same height as me. And it is like it was meant to be. It came from the - let’s see what they call it - the Dutch Reform Church in Amsterdam, Montana. And it was in there, it was their brand new piano in ‘26. So anyway, that was a fun thing I did.

But yeah, it had its ups and downs and I definitely felt validated by the community, I’d say overall, in writing and in people telling us and also coming and talking on council or writing letters of support. But Karen deserves a halo or something. I don’t know. She was a saint through all that. I don’t know how she did it. And I was on the selection committee when we hired her. And we didn’t know anything about her seven years ago when she started. And she cleaned house at the Health Department. It needed it bad. There was a lot of goofy things going on there, and she didn’t make very many friends. And I know that was hard on her, but she stuck to it. She’s a tough Butte girl is all I can say. [laughter] Anything else?

Grant: I got tons more, but eh!

Shaw: Oh, sorry! Well.

Grant: That’s ok. That’s what happens. It’s hard to encapsulate a life in two hours.

Shaw: It is. It is. And I don’t mean to cut it short, but.

Grant: No, I understand. Thanks for your time today.

Shaw: Are we good for two hours, is that ok?

Grant: You bet.

Jaap: Cindi, thank you. It was a pleasure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]