The lights of Helena twinkled in the distance as a coyote’s howl echoed across the Prickly Pear Valley. The huge building loomed cold and uninviting in the summer twilight. Louise Stork and her five colleagues screwed up their courage, for they knew the road ahead would not be easy.

Stork came to Helena in 1908 at the request of the Rev. William Wesley Van Orsdel, Montana’s beloved circuit-riding Methodist minister, to help found a protestant children’s school.

Stork was the first of three Methodist deaconess administrators dedicated to children in need. While “Brother Van” often receives the acknowledgement, the women did the real work, raised funds and nurtured and loved the children.

The seeds they planted a century ago are still growing. Today, Intermountain Children’s Services is an innovative children’s mental health center. His vision is to secure emotional health and a loving permanent family for every child. As Intermountain prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2009, it is clear that despite change and adaptation, the heart of its mission — a love of children and a desire to see to their well-being — remains unchanged.

The Methodist minister was drawn to Montana “to preach, to sing, and encourage people to be good.” From 1872 to 1890, the Rev. Van Orsdel traveled the territory gathering friends of all colors, beliefs and social circumstances. He and his horse, Jonathan, were a familiar, welcome sight in lonely places where the preacher worked his magic in song and prayer.

Appointed presiding elder of the Great Falls district in 1890, Brother Van put his horse in the stable and began other important work, founding Wesleyan University in the Prickly Pear Valley, over 100 Methodist churches and two hospitals across the state. He recruited deaconesses from the Chicago Training School to operate his hospitals. The school offered Methodist women vocational training such as nursing and teaching in the Wesleyan tradition. Louise Stork had a strong background in social work and in 1905, came from the Chicago school to Great Falls to help canvass for the expansion of the Deaconess Hospital there.

Brother Van often lamented that the Catholic Church offered its youth good educations, but there were no protestant counterparts in the entire Northwest. A bachelor with a special love for children, he set out to remedy that situation. The economic panic of 1893 closed the trolley line out to the Prickly Pear valley making Wesleyan University inaccessible to its students. In 1898, officials relocated the campus in town. The university building stood long empty when Brother Van began to campaign for a children’s school. He and Louise Stork convinced the Wesleyan board that the empty college out in the valley was a “black eye” on Methodism. And so the board reluctantly gave permission and the six women arrived at the abandoned campus in the twilight of a June evening in 1909.

The building was in terrible shape. But by September, the women had it furnished and habitable once again. The Montana Deaconess Preparatory School accepted boarding and day students from ages 5 to 14. Monthly tuition was $20 and the well-rounded curriculum extended through the eighth grade. The school catered especially to rural boys and girls whose parents, for a variety of reasons — illness, separation, death of a spouse — were unable to care for their children.

Stork retired in 1910, and Roxanna Beck — like her predecessor, a deaconess trained at Chicago — became principal. In 1913, a third Chicago-trained deaconess, Helen C. Piper, joined the staff as assistant principal. She remained with the school until 1950. The building capacity was 65 students and the school was soon overfull. Children came from all over the Northwest and Canada. By the 1920s, average enrollment was 80 students. In 1929, when Piper became principal, the school accepted 95 students and refused 76.

Locals perceived the school as a place for orphans and destitute children, which it was not, but because of this, the community was always generous. It was true that many children came to the home who could not pay, and refusing students was the challenge. Most difficult of all were the tragic stories of the lonely children who needed comfort and love. During the Great Depression, Piper reported that 70 percent of the work they did was free.

“Yet,” she wrote, “we were able to pay our bills. Friends had slipped us tiny envelopes.”

Donations and a bequest of $10,000 kept the school solvent through the Depression.

Devastating earthquakes in October 1935 destroyed the 1890 school and severely damaged Van Orsdel Hall, just completed next door (the ruins still stand). Students were relocated throughout the community. In 1937, the school moved into Mills Hall, the former home of the Intermountain Union College on 11th Avenue (now the Department of Corrections). As needs changed, the academic curriculum was discontinued in 1954 and Deaconess students began attending public schools. The name changed to Intermountain Deaconess Home for Children.

House parents replaced deaconesses and courts and public welfare agencies began referring troubled adolescents to the home. In 1971, Intermountain moved to its cottage-style campus at 500 S. Lamborn, and in-house educational services resumed. In 1982, professional counselors replaced house parents and services further evolved. Today, Intermountain is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization specializing in nurturing, therapeutic environments for children under severe emotional distress. Children and families learn to trust, to laugh, and to love.

One hundred years ago founders strove to comfort, nurture and “enter into the heart-life of the children.” A century later, the services have changed, but Intermountain’s mission, “healing through healthy relationships,” is not so very different.

Ellen Baumler is the Montana Historical Society’s interpretive historian. Her most recent book, Beyond Spirit Tailings: Montana’s Mysteries, Ghosts and Haunted Places, received a 2006 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History. This article was reprinted from Signature MONTANA, summer 2008.