Parting memories of the historic City Hall

Retired Whitefish Police Chief Bill Labrie climbed the stairs in and out of the basement to City Hall multiple times a day during his career. He made the trek last week for the final time before the historic building is torn down this fall to make way for a new City Hall.

Labrie, who served more than a decade with the department until his retirement in 2001, took a few minutes to walk the tight halls in the basement that previously served as headquarters for police.

“The focal point of town was the police department,” he said. “People came right down in with their complaints.”

Labrie was raised in Whitefish before leaving for Los Angeles where he worked as a homicide detective. He remembers a quieter Whitefish of his youth beside a busy Whitefish when he served as police chief.

The quarters were cramped in the police department, with detectives crammed into a single office. The judge had a small office and council chambers were in the same area of the basement that was eventually opened up entirely for the police department.

Not very far down the hall at the back of the building was the jail, including the original cells from when the building was constructed in 1918. The jail had capacity for 16, but more often then not had a half dozen housed there.

“It was not unusal to have the place filed,” Labrie said.

Just a few steps from the entry to the jail, Labire opened what was the evidence closet. He said the tiny room was often a source of frustration during his career.

“Evidence is so critical,” he said. “As a senior detective in L.A., I knew the aspersions that could be cast if you lost evidence.”

“As chief, I was worried about the evidence, but we never lost one piece,” he said. “I damn near emptied the closet a few times looking for something.”

He served as chief during a time of transition.

Pointing to the bulletproof glass and pass-through door at the entrance to the former police department, he noted that folks didn’t like how impersonal it was to not be able to talk face to face with someone. His time in L.A., however, taught him the value of protecting those who worked inside the police department.

As a child, Labrie remembers chasing the fire trucks on his bicycle so he could help pull hoses for the volunteer firefighters ­­— who included his father.

Current city staff members have some long-reaching memories of the old building, as well.

It was an emotional moment when Vanice Woodbeck locked the doors to City Hall for the final time last week.

“I was the last one out of there,” she said. “I shut off the lights and locked the doors. I had a few tears in my eyes.”

Woodbeck, assistant city clerk, has worked for the city for almost two decades and grew up in Whitefish.

“It was a nice place to work,” she said. “There are some good memories working there. It’s going to be a real hard day when it’s finally torn down.”

Michelle Howke, customer service clerk, has worked for the city for 15 years but says she grew up inside City Hall. Her mom was a dispatcher and clerk and her dad a volunteer firefighter.

“My dad joined the fire department the year I was born,” she said. “I would sit in the fire department and wait for him to come back when he’d go on a fire call.”

Howke has one somber memory from when she was about five or six years old. She remembers waiting inside the building on the night of Jan. 21, 1984, when the Whitefish High School wrestling bus crashed on Highway 2 near Essex. The crash claimed nine lives and shook the community to its core.

“I remember sitting there with my mom while my dad was out on the call,” she said. “I remember the families coming in waiting for information.”

City Clerk Necile Lorang has worked for the city since 1987.

“It was weird to drive by the building this morning,” she said Friday.

Lorang remembers when council would meet in the basement in what would later become the police department.

“It was hot in the summer and noisy from the truck traffic because we were right on street level,” she said.

At the time, the library was in the space that now houses council chambers, which created traffic in and out of the building. Although the library was always quiet.

“It was always a very busy office,” Lorang said. “When people wanted to talk to anybody they’d come to the city clerk office — well, somewhat like it still is now.”

Judge Bradley Johnson has spent a tremendous amount of time in City Hall, serving as a city councilor, 30 years as the city’s municipal judge and a decade on the Whitefish Library Association.

“City Hall was the pulse of the city of Whitefish,” he said.

He remembers the police department in the basement in the 1980s with little security. Windows in the jail were opened for fresh airs and people walking through the alley from the bars would throw down ciggarettes to the prisoners.

“People would walk right in to talk to the dispatchers,” he said.

Once he became judge, he recalls coming in one Sunday to get a jump on the work week. It was the weekend of the Winter Classic and there were 37 prisoners crammed in the jail. He spent the whole day clearing them out.

In the office on the second floor, he recalls a wooden box that held keys for the banks and all the churches in town. If there was an issue, a police officer would be sent with the key to the problem.

“It was so much more relaxed than now,” he said.

Mayors and city councils through the years have held meetings in many areas of the City Hall building. They have sat before packed houses and empty chairs. They have faced both congratulations and critisim for the decisions that have come from the building.

Before councilor Richard Hildner was elected, he remembers going to City Hall for the library, which for years was located in what is now the council chambers.

“This was 1987 and I was remodeling our home and I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing,” he said. “I would run over to the library and quickly check out a book on plumbing, then run home and get started.”

Hildner said he regrets that no one thought to take a picture of the final adjournment of city council last month in the building.

“It struck me in the moments after our last council meeting that I had just participated in a seminal event in the history of Whitefish,” he said. “It is exciting to contemplate what memories and traditions may flow from our new City Hall.”

Mayor John Muhlfeld has one memory of the City Hall building from 2006 when he was first elected that he might rather forget.

“What I won’t miss is accidentally hitting the ‘panic’ button that was strategically positioned on the dias at the same elevation of my knee,” he said. “Only to watch as three police officers walked through the door of council chambers.”