by Travis Mateer
I was busy working on a song with my ukulele when a piece of crumpled paper fell from the sky. I paused my tune and went to pick up the trash that someone had dropped from the bridge above me and was surprised to see the last name NUGENT. How could someone from the well-known NUGENT clan be a blatant litterer, especially when our city is hosting thousands of crazy people who ENJOY running over this busy marathon weekend?
I went to the competitive timing website and confirmed the “J” stands for James, which is the same name as the Nugent dinosaur who called it quits last June after decades of running the city’s attorney office. From the link (emphasis mine):
After nearly five decades, it all came to an end on Monday night, shortly after 9 p.m.
As City Attorney Jim Nugent sat through his last City Council meeting, those around him recounted all the reasons why he’s become an endearing and historic legal figure.
Endearing for all the jokes he liked to tell and historic for his institutional knowledge of Missoula and his ability to recite Montana Code Annotated, seemingly by memory.
“He has served the city for 48 years and has advanced the field of municipal attorney in the state of Montana in countless ways,” said Mayor Jordan Hess. “He’s been a tireless advocate for cities through the Montana League of Cities and Towns. He’s always been a wealth of knowledge and is good for a story you never knew about.”
Oh, so Jim is ALSO a storyteller. Me to, Jim! And lots of MY stories are also ones you, the Missoula public, never knew about, but hopefully will as I continue to identify and dismantle this town’s various mechanisms of narrative control.
After picking up J. Nugent’s trash, I walked to get some coffee and decided another piece of trash I kept seeing needed removing, but before I did I took a pic, since the message on the dirty t-shirt seemed significant.
Moving justice forward will never happen in Missoula until we have a collective reckoning about the unresolved crimes and tragic deaths that have left multiple families in a terrible void where the concept of justice seems more a cruel joke than a tangible reality.
A conversation I had on Saturday reminded me of a young idealist who worked at Forward Montana, but that work ended in 2019 when this young woman chose to end her own life. What were the circumstances that led this woman to make such a drastic decision?
Catherine was brilliantly sarcastic, using an intelligence and a quick, dry wit to either entertain or confound the recipients of her humor. We sense that she never knew how lovable or funny she was.
Catherine’s ideas were out of the ordinary, and she viewed the world in large, global and universal ways. She was an avid advocate of justice, human rights, and the democratic principles of our nation. Her numerous best friends (the “Sisterhood of the Mother of Finn”) are passionate, beautiful, fierce, protective, devoted, adoring, loving, and beloved by Catherine. They cradled her in turbulent times and celebrated with her in happy times, loving her no matter what.
Catherine was the daughter of Oda Sue Tooley and Herbert Warren Shepard. She was born and started school in Billings, Montana. When she was 7, her family moved to Big Timber, Montana where she graduated from Sweet Grass County High School in 2009. Catherine was an exchange student in Bewdley, England, for the first semester of 11th grade. She persevered through many trials, including the death of her father, in order to complete her Bachelor of Science, with honors, in Economics and a minor in Art History from the University of Montana in May 2019. She was immediately granted a fellowship to pursue a Master’s degree in economics, also at UM. She died shortly before beginning those studies in August.
August 16th, the day Catherine died, is the same day my first kid was born. I can’t imagine being a parent and enduring the living hell of experiencing a child’s death, especially if someone contributed to that death in a potentially criminal manner, yet was never held accountable.
The conversation I had yesterday helped me understand the nature of power in Missoula, and how that power is being grossly abused. If laws exist, and justice matters, then NO ONE should be allowed to exist above those laws. Democrats believe this sentiment when it comes to Donald Trump, but do they extend that belief to their own tribe?
No, they don’t, and that’s why my Ellie Boldman problem is YOUR Ellie Boldman problem.
I’d like to think that, like Jim Nugent, I’m “good for a story you never knew about“. If you agree, then please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). I’m only $102 dollars away from hitting $3,000, and every little bit helps.
Thanks for reading!