'We're never without him'

Monte Holm's family remembers him one year after his death

The hardest part is some people still don't know.

Every once in a while, Steve Rimple says someone stops by the House of Poverty Museum to see his grandfather.

"One of the hardest things has been people who stop in, looking for him, and he's not there," he said.

Rimple's grandfather is Monte Holm, the beloved longtime Moses Lake businessman who made his fortune in the junkyard business after riding train rails as a youth during the Great Depression.

Holm founded the Moses Lake Iron and Metal, the Moses Lake Steel Supply and the House of Poverty Museum. A mural depicting his life stands in Sinkiuse Square on the side of the Moses Lake Post Office.

Holm died May 3, 2006.

The museum remains open Monday through Friday from roughly 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., then again for several hours in the afternoon, usually at about 1 p.m. It is operated by longtime Holm employee David Fazende, who started working at the steel yard in 1969.

"The evidence is there," Fazende said of Holm's impact upon the community. "He made a lot of friends, helped a lot of people around."

"We miss Father a lot," Holm's daughter Karen Rimple said. "It's been hard. Sometimes it seems like it was yesterday, sometimes it seems like it was so long ago, but we're hanging in there, taking care of each other."

Karen Rimple said she focuses on the fact her father is no longer in any pain.

"I had one person who said to remember the good things, and I said, 'Everything was good,'" she said. "I have absolutely no bad memories of my dad. Everybody who knew him, he was such a wonderful person, very kind and giving."

"There's a lot of people that liked to visit with him, spend a lot of time with him," Steve Rimple said. "People would go down, just sit there in the museum. It's like when he owned the junkyard. There's people that would literally spend an hour each day or every couple of days going down, just talking with him. I'm sure there's a lot of people that miss having conversations with him. I miss having conversations with him."

Returning from a recent trip, Steve Rimple said, the first thought he had was to call his grandfather.

"It takes a second to realize he's not here," he said. "When we don't think about it, you just kind of go on. But when you stop and think about it … Every time I go to the post office, he's here. Every time I go to my work, I look across the street, there's the museum, he's there. We're never without him."

Seattle resident Larry Rimple, Steve's brother and Holm's other grandson, also has a hard time believing it's been 12 months.

"Oftentimes, I still wait on a Monday or a Friday for that phone call," he said.

Holm would call him every Monday or every Friday for 10 years.

More and more people find out about his grandfather's death each day, Larry Rimple said.

"We get cards, we get e-mails, we get letters from people who are just now realizing this," he said.

If Larry Rimple sees something which reminds him of Holm, it brings it all back to him.

"From the earliest recollection I can have as a kid, I think every day with my grandpa was a different story," he said. "There was no routine life when you're Monte Holm's grandson. His stories never ended, and I don't think I heard the same stories twice. Every day was something new."

Larry Rimple knows he lived "kind of a weird childhood" in terms of having Holm's museum and train as his backyard.

"I grew up thinking we all had steam trains in our backyards," he said. "What I thought was normal might be spectacular for somebody else, but that was just the life he lived. It was just an amazing childhood; I can say a year later, I don't focus on him not being here as much as I focus on what he did for me."

Larry Rimple believes his grandfather symbolized every thing the Columbia Basin is about, noting the area was a dust bowl when Holm arrived in Moses Lake in the 1950s. Holm instilled in his grandsons the importance of working hard and being good to people, Larry Rimple said.

"It was just hard work by very hardy people who created a great city, a beautiful landscape, and I think he was the epitome of that, because his whole life was hard work," he said. "Being fair, just being a good person. To me, it's less about his museum, it's less about the train, it's less about the antique cars. It should be about the man. Those were just items he loved, items he collected, but it's about the man."

Holm never forgot his roots, Larry Rimple said.

"He never forgot where he was from, and I can guarantee he never forgot what it was like to be hungry, and he never wanted to see anyone go through that," he said. "I think that was a lot of his generosity to anyone who came through his door, because he saw the other side of that. He was in the position when he was young to beg for food, to beg for work, to beg for help and he saw the good and badness of people. When he became fortunate in his life, he wanted to focus on the good. That, I think, really epitomized Monte Holm the man."