Glacier Park Ranger remembered as 'consummate outdoorsman'

Steve Frye remembers the trip well. It was an awful bushwhack up the headwaters of Bowman Lake. The brush was thick all around. But Bob Paul, the leader of this expedition, turned around and looked at them and smiled.

"I'm on a trail," he told his fellow rangers. "I can feel it."

Sure enough, Paul was right and soon they would find what they were looking for — the Jefferson Snowshoe Cabin — a remote patrol cabin nearly forgotten.

Frye, who would go on to become a chief ranger for Glacier National Park, recalled that Paul was the "consummate outdoorsman."

"He was as resourceful and resilient as anyone I met in my career at the Park Service."

Paul died Jan. 3 in Oregon. He was 94. For 53 years he was a seasonal ranger in Glacier, spending most of his time at Bowman Lake with his wife Mary and family where he earned the nickname "Bowman Bob," and was given a Superior Service Award by the National Park Service.

He started his career on July 7, 1947 doing trail crew and fireguard duties for $1 an hour.

Park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt recalled the couple fondly. Vanderbilt was working in dispatch in the early 1980s and noted whenever she went to visit the Pauls, Mary would "always have a homemade pie ready."

"She was perfect in every regard," Frye recalled. "She'd insist you sit down and have whatever she had baked."

Colleague Bud Pfuhl recalled Bob's sense of humor. Bob once made a Burma Shave-style sign that hung at the junction of the North Fork Road and the spur to Polebridge. It read "There's No Fuel like an Old Pfuhl."

Pfuhl was the ranger at Logging Creek at the time.

"He was a terribly energetic fellow," Pfuhl recalled. "Very innovative."

A 1973 story in the Hungry Horse News featured Paul and Mary at Bowman.

Bob was a native of New York City and received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University and taught school in Oregon. He is survived by Mary and two daughters, Janet Bones and Nancy Trembath, who reside in Bigfork. A complete obituary appears in this newspaper.