Longtime resident reflects on journey to Whitefish

When Janet Collins thinks back on how she came to Whitefish in the mid-60s, she says it was a bit of an adventure.

Her first husband Helmuth Matdies, originally from Austria, was working as a ski instructor. He had injured his back in a ski race and was looking at six months of recovery. At the time, Collins was on maternity leave from her job as a dietitian. The young couple knew it was the only time they might have off from work together, so they made plans to leave Minnesota and move west.

“We bought a car from my grandfather and pulled a utility trailer across the Rocky Mountains,” Collins recalled. “We packed up our 1-year-old and newborn.”

They didn’t have a destination in mind, but ended up in Whitefish and rented a cabin at Bay Point. Matdies was hired as a ski instructor on Big Mountain and Collins went to work as the Flathead Valley’s only dietitian at the Kalispell hospital.

“I said before we left that if we get into the mountains ‘I think you’ll like it,’” Collins said. “It wasn’t until later that he told me about this idea he had to come to Whitefish because he had met someone who had grown up here.”

Eventually, they would purchase five acres at the corner of Karrow Avenue and West Seventh Street. Her parents helped with the $2,500 down payment. Having little themselves, the couple purchased the bedroom and dinning room sets from the home’s previous owners.

“They called it a five-acre ranchette,” she said. “There was an orchard next to us and kitty-corner there were woods. It was all gravel roads.”

Sitting in a recliner inside that same log home, Collins, 77, recently recalled her life spent in Whitefish working and raising her children.

Collins and Matdies eventually divorced, but not before the family began taking horse pack trips into the wilderness. Someone once traded a horse for ski lessons from Matdies.

“He asked me if I wanted to go into the Bob Marshall — it was my first trip into the wilderness,” she said. “I thought it would be exciting, but I’d have to find a babysitter. He said ‘we’re not going without the children.’”

The family spent many day trips and longer camping adventures riding horses in the wilderness. Collins continued to ride horses on trails, in parades and participate in ski joring races, even after their divorce and later after Matdies passed away.

“I thought it was important for the kids,” she said. “I always liked the wilderness. We didn’t have a lot of money, but camping and riding was something we could do.”

Collins served as dietitian for the Kalispell hospital and traveled as a consultant for many years. Eventually wanting to be closer to home, she went to work at the Whitefish hospital.

After 10 years as a single parent, she met Jack Collins through a mutual acquaintance. She asked him to be her escort to the hospital Christmas party and they eventually joined families when they married — his three boys and her two boys and a girl. Although they later divorced, Collins said Jack was a “kind-hearted man who brought a lot of happiness” to her life.

After a time, Collins left her job in Whitefish and began working for the state Department of Health and Human Services. She traveled around Montana inspecting hospitals and nursing homes. She returned to Whitefish several years ago to care for her ailing mother before she passed away at the beginning of the year.

These days when she’s not attending her writing class at Flathead Valley Community College, Collins spends time with her English springer spaniel. She still cares for her five horses that live in the pasture out her back door, although she doesn’t get out to ride like she’d like.

She has three grown children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“I feel like I’m an ordinary person,” she said. “I’ve always done whatever I can do to help others.”