By Suzanne Waring
“Wayne, sit back!” was the shout Wayne Arnst heard as he hung out of a helicopter, trying to get the perfect photograph. “I didn’t realize that I was leaning out of the door too far and could have easily toppled out. My mind was on getting a good shot,” Arnst later recounted. Several times during his thirty-two-year career as a photojournalist, Arnst found himself riding in a helicopter to photograph animals, wildfires, or scenery.
Arnst, a Montanan through and through, was born in Conrad and grew up in Valier. At Valier High School, he shared classes with Ivan Doig, a lifelong friend and celebrated Montana author. Wayne’s free time during his youth was spent hunting and fishing on the Rocky Mountain Front, a place that continues to be close to his heart. After a short stint at Montana State University-Bozeman, Wayne joined the Army and spent two years in Germany. After leaving military service, he went to Mexico for a while and then took jobs in succession with Boeing, the Conrad Implement Company, and the Blueprint and Letter Company.
At that last job he met Warren Ford who asked Wayne to be first mate on a sail boat touring the world in 1967. Ford bought a thirty-foot Tahiti ketch they named “Maverick.” They left the states by sailing from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Eastport, Maine and to Nova Scotia where they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Plymouth, England. After stopping in Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar, they had planned to go through the Suez Canal, but a war was going on between Iseral and Egypt. Instead, they embarked on a return trip to the Americas by first stopping off at Tangier and Casablanca, Morocco. They recrossed the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Barbados, toured the West Indies, passed through the Panama Canal, traveled up the Pacific Coast to Acapulco, and finally landed in San Diego. The details of that trip when Arnst was a young man embarking on his life experiences continue to remain vivid in his mind.
Upon returning to Montana and working once more at the Conrad Implement Company, Arnst renewed an acquaintance with his childhood neighbor, Genise Bonnet. They were married in 1969, and that year Wayne attended Northern Montana College while Genise taught in the Havre Public Schools. They then moved to Missoula where Arnst majored in journalism, graduating in 1972.
After surveying the newspapers around the state, Wayne landed a job at the Great Falls Tribune, and the couple settled down to raise two daughters, Tana and Toni. Arnst’s daily assignments at the Tribune presented new opportunities to document through photographs news events, community happenings, or the natural beauty of Montana.“I enjoyed my work. There was always something exciting to photograph,” Arnst said. For a time,Wayne was also the outdoor editor writing a column titled, “Open Air.” Through this column, he often
wrote of personal experiences the family had fishing, hunting, and camping, occasionally with Ivan Doig and his wife, Carol, along.
Wayne was well into his career when digital cameras replaced those that used film. He was enthusiastic about digital cameras from the beginning.
“I invested in a nice Nikon digital camera as soon as I could,” said Arnst. “I felt that digital revolutionized photojournalism because I could take as many shots as I wanted. I could also press “playback” button while on site to see if I had a good shot instead of going back to the office to develop film.”
According to his daughters, digital was a welcomed relief after an experience with film. “I vividly remember our family trip to Hawaii.” said Tana, “Dad had something like fifteen cannisters of film with him. Security was not amused and inspected each cannister. It was taking so long that the rest of the family worried we’d miss the plane.”
When Wayne’s distinguished career came to a close in 2004, he quietly put away his journalism hat. He transitioned to a new chapter of his life and moved to North Dakota where he continued to capture images of the beauty he found in his surroundings.
Wayne is now eighty-six years old, and he has been busy during his retirement with projects. For one, he drew from his collection of stunning nature photographs to craft for Genise, Toni, and Tana each a three-foot framed set of photographs depicting the Twenty- third Psalms in the Old Testament.
For example, a photo of a bighorn ram depicted the added wording, ”He makes me lie down in green pastures.”
Wayne’s true passion in retirement became handcrafting wooden crosses, producing over eight hundred of them to give away to other people. Each cross bears the letters, AGG2G, which represent the wording, “All Glory Goes to God.” These crosses reflect his steadfast faith. Like the crosses, Wayne’s stories and photographs live on as his legacy for his family, friends, and the people he has met along the way.