2006 Missoulian article on lasting friendship of former Prescott School students

Neighborhood Schools tend to foster strong friendships and sometimes even lifelong friendships. This post is about a Missoulian article reporting on the highlights of a life time friendship between four people who attended Prescott School located in the lower Rattlesnake.

It is the position of Prescott School Missoula that Prescott School be used for it's intended purpose - a school for public school children, then Prescott School can once again foster life long frienships among children in the neighborhood as did these four children.

The title of the article about the four Rattlesnake Valley friends is, "

"A lasting bond: Fifty years after taking the stage, old Missoula friends remain close" by Michael Moore of the Missoulian

Click on the following link-

A lasting bond: Fifty years after taking the stage, old Missoula friends remain close

A cute picture courtesy of Nancy Boyer Heyer and colored by Kurt Wilson/of the Missoulian accompanies the article.
Some quotes from the article are -

"The Prescott Elementary School sugar plum fairies pose for a photograph before their Christmas pageant in 1956. The four, Mary Lynn Barrows, Colleen Baldry, Nancy Boyer and Linda Baker, were third-graders at the time and three of the girls have maintained a 50-year friendship." For most of the winter's night, the four 8-year-old girls stood behind the curtain, waiting to play their roles as sugar plum fairies in the Christmas pageant at Prescott Elementary School."

and -

"It was the night of Dec. 12, 1956. They were supposed to be quiet - not a creature was stirring, after all - but they were only third-graders."

and -

"They had to tell us to hush so many times, we were so fussy and loud," said Nancy Heyer, who was Nancy Boyer back then. "But when our time came, we just came to life, flitting across the stage in our tutus for all we were worth."

and -

"The girls - Nancy, Linda Baker Malingo, Colleen Baldry Davis and Mary Lynn Barrows - were already friends from the lower Rattlesnake, but that night as fairies fixed them in a universe that lives to this day. "

and -

"Fifty years later, three of them still share an orbit of friendship that lets them move through the years of their lives knowing they'll always realign."

and -

"You know, there was no way to know it back then, but something was cemented in place back then that has held us all in place," Colleen Davis said recently by phone from Sandy, Utah. "I really can't imagine my life without them now."

and -

"They started as the Sugar Plums, and that name is still with them when they get together for their yearly visits. But they've also been called the Golden Girls upon their be-hatted arrivals in Las Vegas, and with their maiden names all starting with B, Nancy, Linda and Colleen will always be the Three Bs."

and -

"The girls grew up in a different, more laid-back Missoula, a time, Nancy said, when "downtown was the mall."

and -

"We used to just walk down to Woolworth's and drink cherry Cokes and eat fries," she said. "A girl could go anywhere she wanted. We were always going down to the Rialto to see a movie."

and -

"They stayed good friends through grade school, but by the time they went to Hellgate High, Mary Lynn had moved off to Washington, D.C. The Three Bs stayed close, but other girls and - more importantly - boys entered their world, too.:

and -

"They'd often gather at reunions, and they generally got together if one or more of them was in Missoula. They traded Christmas cards, and all three remember getting together at the Western Montana Fair."

and -

"Still, a decade or so ago, conversations started turning to the possibility of the Sugar Plums gathering for a trip. They talked about a handful of locations, including everyone coming home to Montana, ...

and -

"The trips proved a bonding mechanism as strong as that December night when the girls flitted about as pastel fairies and first fell under the magical spell called friendship. "

and -

"There is something about old friends, the girls say, that makes all the difference."

and -

"They are tied by memory to their old Rattlesnake Valley neighborhood. They knew one another's parents, and what they did. They know the children and the husbands. They know, literally, all the secrets, so there's no more need for them."

and -

"They are friends who are literally golden," Nancy said. "You need nothing from them except what and who they are. They offer laughter and compassion. They are keepers."

and -
"They once were 8. Now they're women of a certain age. They once wore tutus and, if it came down to it, they would wear them again. Even now, their hats are often the pastel colors of their long-ago fairy costumes."

and -

"Maybe all this strikes you as impossibly, improbably sentimental. Colleen Davis would agree with you."

and -

"In their small, third-grade way, the girls brought a shimmering light into the world when they passed across the stage 50 years ago. Unlike many, they nurtured that light, shielded it, kept it alive through the years."

and -

"We are in each other's everyday lives," Colleen said. "Even when we're far away, we're never far away. If one of them needed me, I would be there yesterday. They would do the same for me. All these years later, we just love each other."