Relatives and descendants from around the country honored mens' memory at 90 year reunion

BILLINGS -- For the homesteader community in the country around Pompeys Pillar, there was big news 90 years ago.

On Independence Day 1917, Jessie McKay Mahler, the wife of Clarence ''Curly'' Mahler, gave birth to triplet boys in the tiny bedroom of their two-room cabin eight miles north of Pompeys Pillar. The boys weighed just 2 1/2, 3 1/2 and 4 pounds, and when a doctor arrived after their birth he reportedly told the family, ''They'll never make it.''

Conditions were harsh, and a terrible tragedy would strike the family just a year and a half later, but the triplets not only made it, they went on to be popular student athletes at schools in Lodge Grass and then at the Billings Polytechnic Institute, a two-year school that later became Rocky Mountain College.

Though the triplets of Pompeys Pillar didn't make it to their 90th birthday, about 20 relatives and descendants from around the country honored their memory at a reunion over the weekend, a gathering that included a visit on Sunday to what remains of the old homestead cabin.

The reunion was organized by Billings residents Gladys Mahler Stone, who was married to one of the triplets, and her daughter, Pamela Gustafson.

Jessie McKay's family homesteaded near Pompeys Pillar in the late 1800s. Jessie attended a teachers college in Fargo, N.D., and then a nursing school in St. Paul, Minn., from which she graduated in 1906. After working as a nurse in the vicinity of Billings for 10 years, she returned to the Pompeys Pillar area, where she had her own homestead and where she taught at country schools.

In the early summer of 1916, she married Curly, a cowboy she met a dance. Curly was born in Indiana in 1873 and hopped trains west when he was a teenager. Barely a year after their marriage, the triplets were born.

Jessie's father wanted to name them Grover, William and Teddy, after Presidents Cleveland, McKinley and Roosevelt, while others in the community thought it would be fitting to name them Red, White and Blue. Their more practical parents ended up naming the two identical twins Clarence and Walter. The third, a fraternal triplet, was named Donald.

Doreen McKay Christensen, a niece of Jessie's, wrote about the arrival of the triplets in ''North of the Yellowstone, South of the Bulls,'' a collection of family histories published in 1978.

''When I saw them they were laying on cotton batting crossways in a baby bed which was next to the kitchen stove,'' she wrote.

The triplets were such a hit that Montana Gov. Samuel V. Stewart, a friend of Jessie's father, visited the homestead during their first year. In advance of the governor's visit, Christensen said, ''all of the men'' in the area hurriedly helped Curly add two larger rooms onto the cramped shack.

The boys were only a year and a half old when an influenza epidemic swept across the world, killing tens of millions of people. Among the victims was Jessie Mahler, struck down on a cold January day in 1919. It was known that Jessie was 6 months pregnant, but not until her mother and sisters tried to save the unborn child did they discover the astonishing fact that Jessie was, again, pregnant with triplets, all girls this time.

''Dad helped Grandma wash and dress aunt Jessie and then he and Grandpa put her and the babies in a long basket in the back seat of an old touring car and took them into Billings'' for burial, Christensen wrote. ''Everyone was crying, even the cowboys. The McKays never did get over that!''

Pamela Gustafson, who wrote a short account of the triplets' lives for an earlier reunion, described what happened next.

''Suddenly, these homestead neighbors had three additional 1-1/2-year-olds to care for, in the dead of winter, and their finances were precarious. I just can't imagine how hard their lives were. I remember stories of the family sitting the triplets on an ironing board and feeding them right down the line with the same spoon.''

There was some talk of separating the boys, but a relative, Kora Davis, had other ideas. She took them off to Billings to raise them, and a year or so later, Curly, mostly because he wanted his boys back, asked her to marry him.

The new family moved to Lodge Grass when the boys were young. In an unidentified newspaper article written when the boys were 12, they were described as exemplifying ''the best that can be found in wholesome and sturdy American boyhood.'' In 1934, just before the boys were to enter the Polytechnic Institute, it was reported in the Watchman-Examiner, a religious publication, that they had been simultaneously baptized in the Bighorn River by the Rev. Earle D. Sims.

''Mr. Sims had but one formula for the three and with their arms around one another he baptized the three at one time, and brought them up from the water together,'' it said.

All three played basketball at the Polytechnic, where they also excelled academically, according to Pamela. They also indulged in a few pranks at college. Walt, who was good at math, would take two tests, one for himself and one for Clarence. Clarence would return the favor by sitting in for Walt during his English exam.

It was also at the Polytechnic that Donald met the woman who would become his wife, Gladys Newton, a Laurel girl who went to a high school affiliated with the college during her junior and senior years. They were married on Sept. 2, 1938, after Donald had already gone to work for the railroad in Laurel. He had done his machinist apprenticeship with the Northern Pacific Railway in Livingston, and he later took a correspondence course in mechanical engineering.

His brothers, meanwhile, both went into psychology, Walt earning a doctorate from Columbia University and Clarence earning his Ph.D. at Colorado State University. Donald later attended Purdue University, where he earned a degree in engineering. Pamela said the boys' mother had been ''fiercely determined'' that they all have a good education, and Kora was just as adamant on the point.

Pamela was only 4 years old when her father went in for a tonsillectomy. They were living in South Dakota at the time, and Don wrote to his parents on Feb. 16, 1947, to assure them he was all right.

''I have been bothered quite a bit by my sinus and tonsils so I am going to have my tonsils out Thurs.,'' he wrote. ''I will stay at the hospital the first day so there won't be anything to worry about. The Dr. said he doesn't leave a patient until he is sure there will be no more bleeding.''

As it happened, the doctor could not stop the bleeding after surgery and Donald died on Feb. 20. He was just 29.

Walter and Clarence went on to distinguished careers as psychologists, Walter as a consultant to major businesses and Clarence as a professor at California State University at Chico. Clarence died in September of 1998 and Walter in May of 1999.

The triplets' father and stepmother lived exceptionally long lives. Pamela said the marriage was one of convenience in the earlier years, and when the boys were young Kora discovered that Curly had been unfaithful to her. Either to punish him or because she suffered a breakdown, she was confined to her bed for an entire year.

Curly, who was known to have a fondness for gambling, mostly worked odd jobs, cowboying for other people. ''I don't think he was ever very settled,'' Gladys said.

And Curly apparently didn't want the triplets to follow his lead. He wouldn't let them wear cowboy hats, boots or other cowboy gear.

Despite their problems, Curly and Kora grew closer in their old age, Pamela said, and ''at the end, he really took care of her.'' Kora died in 1971, at the age of 99, and Curly died in 1975, at 102.