Merrill K Riddick: Pioneering Eccentricity

by Reecy Pontiff 

From the Philipsburg Mail, May 2013

Granite County's airport, Riddick Field, bears the name of a quixotic legend, a man who barnstormed with Charles Lindberg, ran three unsuccessful presidential campaigns and pioneered environmentalism in America. 

The airfield at Philipsburg, MT, named for pilot and
resident Merril Riddick. Photo by Reecy Pontiff

“He wasn't going to be the president... but everybody tolerated him. He had respect,” said Dean Neitz, who worked at the Philipsburg Mail when Merrill K. Riddick made his home here after World War II.

Neitz ran the printing press late into the night, sometimes until two in the morning, and Riddick would stop by to chew his ear off.

“When I'd be working at night Merrill would come in, and he'd talk and he'd talk and he'd talk. I was trying to run the press... He was kind of a nuisance. ” Neitz said.

But “he was certainly very bright... and a very accomplished pilot,” Neitz said. 

A graduate in the first class of the Army Air Force Aeronautics School in California, Riddick flew reconnaissance missions in Europe during WWI and acted as a flight instructor in both World Wars. He later barnstormed in an air circus with Charles A. Lindbergh and was also one of America's first airmail pilots, according to the University of Montana's Riddick archives.

Neitz recalls Riddick saying “he landed many times on the White House lawn with the mail,” during one of their late-night sessions.

Though born in New York state, Riddick's family moved to Montana when he was 11 years old. After his adventures through the wild blue yonder, Riddick returned to Montana to prospect for gold, according to his New York Times obituary. 

While mining around the Granite County area, Riddick made local history by staking a claim on the corner of the bank parking lot in downtown Philipsburg. He drove a 4x4 post into the ground and placed the claim in an old tobacco can hanging from it, according to Mike Kahoe, who was chairman of the committee that rededicated Philipsburg Airport in Riddick's name. 

“I don't know if you can actually stake claims on private property,” Kahoe said, “but I think he was trying to make a point.”

“The banker didn't like that very well because [Riddick] was actually thinking about drilling,” said Steve Immenschuh, who was just a boy in the 1960s and 70s when his mother ran the Philipsburg hotel where Riddick took up residence, “He had a drill rig just outside of town here on another project... he was serious!” 

Riddick was quite a character around town, a short, round widower with thick glasses. He forayed into politics after the death of his wife, making a bid for governor of Montana in 1968 and U.S. senator in 1972. Failing miserably on both counts Riddick decided to raise his sites to the highest office in the nation – he ran presidential campaigns in 1976, 1980 and 1984, according to his New York Times obituary. 

Immenschuh was a teenager when Riddick asked him to paint a campaign sign for his first election, which was hung in the window of Riddick's office on Broadway.

After Riddick lost, “it was stored in the hotel basement... a year later he decided he was going to run for another political office and we dig out the sign and I repaint it with a different party and a different office,” Immenschuh said, “The 'Merrill Riddick' stayed and everything else changed.”

Riddick was also famous for refusing to accept campaign donations – with the exception of a silver dollar from young Immenschuh.

“He was kind of a unique guy. I went down to his office and said, 'I know you're not taking any campaign contributions, but have a silver dollar,'” Immenschuh said, “He thought that was pretty nice." 

Fortunately Riddick had other projects to spend that silver dollar on. He also published a periodical on resource management called the “Journal of Applied Human Ecology” completely out of his own pocket – and that of his local financiers. 

“My dad owned the service station... and I can remember him when I was a kid coming up and asking my dad for a little bit of money” to publish the journal, Kahoe said.

As the name of his journal suggested, the environment was a huge issue for Riddick. During his late-night sessions at the printing press with Neitz, “he talked about environmentalists. Nobody had heard the terminology [back then]. He was ahead of his time,” Nietz said.

To that end, Riddick ran for president under a political party of his own creation, the grandiosely named Magneto-hydrodynamics-Puritan Epic-Prohibition Party.

“He explained to me [his political party] had to do with producing electricity through burning coal and producing steam to turn the turbines,” Immenschuh said, “Which was really neat because I'd never heard of it before.”

And so it came that Philipsburg Airport was renamed Riddick Field on the town's bicentennial in 1976. Due to poor health Riddick had already relocated to Maryland to live with his sister, but he returned to Granite County with his family for the ceremony on that sunny day in May. “Several hundred persons flocked to the field” to listen to the local high school bands and watch the air circus, according to the May 6, 1976 issue of the Philipsburg Mail. Riddick even returned to the skies once more, taking a ride in an open cockpit biplane during the celebrations. 

Merrill K. Riddick died in 1988, but here in Granite County his legend will live on forever.