How Flathead residents can help 'Scarecrow' Sue

A benefit auction for "Scarecrow" Sue Snyder will be held in May or June.

A live, silent auction is planned, with music and food from Somers Bay Cafe and other vendors. It will be an outdoor event, with arts and crafts sales, and the feel of a farmers market.

Local artists, among them sculptor Ken Bjorge, are donating their works.

Dennis Hatton of Somers Bay Cafe and Ruth Helen from Sliter's Ace Lumber and Building Supply in Somers are organizing the event.

Hatton also is setting up an account for Snyder at Flathead Bank. Snyder is applying for Medicaid to help pay her medical bills and recovery costs from severe burns, but she has been stymied by regulations that require her first to be disabled for a year.

Snyder is currently living with friends and has no space for donations of personal items, she said.

Her friends are planning to help her re-create her home, which was destroyed by a Thanksgiving fire. A contractor and part-time Somers resident, John Thompson, has volunteered to help rebuild Snyder's home in May and June. Construction volunteers will be needed.

Sliters Ace Lumber and Building Supply in Somers is one of the businesses that has offered to donate supplies and challenges others to do the same.

More immediately, what Snyder is needs is a crane to help remove a large, cast-iron bell from a belfry that will be replaced.

Anxious to get back to her artwork, Snyder hopes to inhabit an old tack-and-saddle shop that she moved onto her property as a studio. It will be heated by wood, and Snyder hopes to have a construction outhouse on her property to make it livable for a while.

Anyone with items to donate for the auction or other contributions should call Al Johnson at 857-2521.