Couple honored for decades of teaching, volunteering

Since she herself was a third-grader, Jerrie Boksich knew she wanted to be like the teacher she looked up to at her Portland, Oregon, grade school.

“I thought she was wonderful, and what she did was wonderful, and I wanted to do it too. I never wavered in wanting to be a teacher,” Jerrie said.

Her husband Ray, on the other hand, did not plan on a career as an educator.

“I had no clue, I kind of dropped in and out of college for a few years and then moved around the country a little bit and finally decided then that I wanted to be a teacher,” he said.

Ray and Jerrie married two years after meeting, and both went on to spend the rest of their careers teaching and volunteering in Whitefish.

The Whitefish Rotary Club has named Ray and Jerrie the recipients of the 2019 Spirit of Whitefish Award, which goes to a person or people outside the club who exhibits dedication and support to the community. The couple will be honored at the club’s Spirit of Whitefish celebration on Friday, Sept. 6 at the O’Shaughnessy Center at 6 p.m.

Both Ray and Jerrie left their mark on Whitefish Schools, with Ray amassing 39 years working in the district and Jerrie 42 years.

Ray taught at Muldown for his first 10 years, then moved to Central School from 1982 until 2000, when he became the head teacher at the Whitefish Independent High School. He retired in 2010. Outside the classroom, he’s been involved in Whitefish Winter Carnival since moving to Whitefish in the 1970s, youth sports teams, Big Mountain Ski Club and the Bulldog Booster Club. At City Hall, he served two years as Mayor, six years on the City Council and eight years on the Whitefish Park Board.

Jerrie stayed at Muldown until retiring in 2012, teaching every grade. She was also an enrichment teacher for K-6 and served on the Northwest Reading Council, Montana State Reading Council and the International Reading Council. She also has volunteered with Winter Carnival since the 1970s, was the local American Cancer Society Education Chairman and a Relay For Life organizer, and has volunteered for other organizations like Meals on Wheels and Shepherd’s Hand.

The couple also hosted 24 American Field Service foreign exchange students, each of whom lived with them for a full school year.

A lot has changed in education since they started more than 40 years ago, Ray and Jerrie note.

For one, technology has seeped into so many parts of the classroom, and the questions of how to use technology and when not to has become increasingly difficult to answer. Ray remembers taking on the Library and Media Specialist position for Central School in 1985, when the school had only one set of desktop computers to work with and one audio/visual room to share.

On Jerrie’s side, she says she’s seen the workload of teachers increase since she first started. There’s more to do in the same amount of hours now, which makes things harder for teachers throughout the district.

The things she loves about teaching, however, have not changed, and likely won’t, she says.

“Kids never cease to amaze me, what they will come up with. Their minds are so inventive and they really are hungry for learning. Sometimes it’s not always the traditional way, but all children love learning. It’s just exciting to see them grow as people,” she said.

For Ray, teaching ended up being the ideal job for him, despite stumbling into it.

“Every day is a new life. It’s something new, it’s something different,” he said. “It’s probably one of the few jobs that I can think of that isn’t boring, because you’re dealing with people and you’re dealing with kids, so every day is a new set of circumstances. Your ability to adjust with the kids in situations is pretty exciting”

Just as education has changed in their time here, so too has Whitefish, they say.

Jerrie started coming to Whitefish for the summer as a University of Montana student in 1967, while Ray came to student teach in 1971, while pursuing a degree at Western Montana College in Butte.

A lot of things stand out when they look back, like the way snow was always piled up on the sides of the streets.

“In those days, they didn’t move the snow from the streets, they just kept piling it up. I remember being more surprised when I came back in the spring because what I thought were hills were gone, they were just snow. It was pretty amazing,” Ray said.

The other thing that stood out was the Winter Carnival.

“I thought it was fantastic,” Ray said, recalling his first experience with the festival. “I think one of the first things that I saw in the streets on Central Avenue was broom hockey, and it kind of became a drunken brawl. There were college kids coming up from the University of Montana and Bozeman. They’d flood the streets and it was pretty wild.”

“I grew up in Portland, Oregon, watching the Rose Festival parade. This was sort of a whole new experience,” Jerrie added. “This was like, ‘Oh this is real down home, but it’s fun.’ It was very different. But always what impressed me was how much the town participated in it, and how much everybody looked forward to it and how everybody came out for it.”

Since their first experiences, both Ray and Jerrie have been involved in Carnival in a variety of ways. They both were members of the Whitefish Congenials, also known as the Blue Coats, a group that supported and promoted Carnival and other city events. In 1993, Ray was chosen as Prime Minister to King Ullr XXXIV, Ralph Swanson, and he was the recipient of the High Ullr Award in 2005.

Jerrie helped organize the Bicentennial Winter Carnival Muldown Float in 1976, which saw about 150 students marching down the town’s streets.

She was also the official Royal Scribe, hand lettering all of the knightings from the 80s until a decade or so ago. She received the High Ullr Award in 1995 and has been knighted several times.

The Carnival highlight for both Ray and Jerrie came in 2016, when they were crowned King Ullr and Queen of the Snows. The honor was a lot of fun, they say, and it was enlightening to see just how many people are involved with Carnival behind the scenes, which impressed them even after decades of volunteering.

“It was so fun,” Ray said. “They call it ‘hell week’ before Winter Carnival, because the royal family does all their various activities, going around to the nursing homes, the schools. It’s a very busy week, and that’s all really rewarding. The little kids are just fascinated, they want to touch the sword and they think the queen is real and want to wear her crown.”

For Jerrie, the experience of rounding the corner to find so many people during the parade is always the best part.

“You get on the float for the parade, and you come down and turn and come on to Central Avenue. And you see the hordes of people, and they’re clapping and they’re cheering. It takes your breath away,” she said.

Both Ray and Jerrie say it’s humbling to be awarded for loving and working with the Whitefish community.

Neither of them are lacking for community involvement or achievements in their time in Whitefish, and both says they’ve been motivated just by the desire to give back to the place they love.

“It’s pretty exciting. You don’t do things for recognition, you do things because they’re the right thing to do,” Ray said. “To realize that other people appreciate and recognize you for doing those things is great, it’s a nice honor.”

“It’s humbling. It seems like there’s so many other people who have done a lot of things, so it’s very humbling,” Jerrie added. “It’s a very nice honor.”

Tickets for the Spirit of Whitefish celebration are $50, available at the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce or by calling Joe Basirico at 253-2278.