Seniors take flight over Glacier Park mountains

Three senior citizens at BeeHive Homes in Columbia Falls were treated to an aerial adventure last week to check an item off their bucket lists.

Bill Thomas, Rita Ranes and Joyce Steele joined a group which flew over Glacier National Park in a helicopter.

Julia Wiebelhaus, the owner and administrator of the Columbia Falls assisted living home, called the experience a lucky one.

“Every year the BeeHive corporation — we’re franchised — selects a state and tells us to select some residents who have a bucket list item,” she said. “We had three in the Flathead and two down in Missoula.”

The list includes experiences people want to have before they “kick the bucket,” as the expression goes. One request was to fly over a national park in a helicopter. Yellowstone was the first choice, but Glacier proved to be a fantastic alternative.

“Boy the scenery was nice,” Thomas said. “That was the first time I’ve ever been in a helicopter. There were seven of us in there. It was crowded.”

For Thomas, 91, it had been a long time since he was up in the air — he was a Navy pilot in World War II. But instead of searching for moonlight glinting off Japanese submarines, he got to look down on mountain goats near the Canada border.

Ranes, 90, enjoyed the ride, but admits she had something else on her mind for a “bucket list.”

“It was exciting, something I had looked forward to for a long time,” she said. “I’ve been looking at those mountains for 30 years. It was great to finally see them from the top, but when can I go skydiving?”

Ranes had skydiving on her list but couldn’t find a company that would let her do it. When a completely deaf woman hooked to an oxygen tank wants to jump from a plane, it’s complicated things, Wiebelhaus explained.

“I’ve still got lots of things I want to do,” Ranes said. “Whatever comes up, I’m game for it.”

That was Steele’s attitude as well. Steele, 88, is a Columbia Falls native.

“I was a little scared, but it doesn’t hurt you to be scared once in a while,” she said. “It was quite the experience.”

Steele kept an eye out during the flight for safe places where the helicopter could crash — should it come to that.

Thomas, who recalled one engine of his twin-engine naval reconnaissance plane cutting out 300 miles from land in the South Pacific during World War II, was less concerned.

“The pilot was real good,” he said. “He pointed out the mountains by name.”

Thomas has one big thing left on his bucket list — visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Steele? She’d like to go to Hawaii. And Ranes is still waiting for a chance to skydive.

“Let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s go.”