Wally E. Albert

CORVALLIS - Wally E. Albert, 86, of Corvallis passed away Saturday, May 3, 2014 at the Marcus Daly Hospice and Palliative Care Center. He was born the only child of Nora S. and Frank J. Albert on February 12, 1928. Wally had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior weeks before his passing and is now in the arms of that Savior. He will be truly missed by the Chavez family and grandchildren who loved him like a grandpa. He was in our lives for 13 years, and many other friends close by.
Wally spent most of his life in the Missoula area, but he was born in Wallace, ID, and so was named for the town. As a railroad fireman and engineer, his father moved to Missoula weeks after Wally's birth. There he lived at the family home in the Rattlesnake Valley at the corner of Cherry and Monroe for 57 years. As a child he fished Rattlesnake Creek, which had plentiful fish at the time. When he was 12 years old, he contracted Polio which made it impossible for him to play the sports he loved.
As he grew older, he pursued his outdoor interests of hunting and trapping despite his physical difficulties. However, there came a time when looked though his rifle scope at a beautiful buck and wondered, "Why would I want to kill that animal?" That ended his hunting days, and a similar experience ended his trapping. Looking for other ways to enjoy the outdoors, he became a serious birder and began wondering about the plants he encountered on his birding excursions. A neighbor worked at the university and offered to take plant specimens to botanists there for identification. Eventually she recommended that he contact Klaus Lackschewitz for help with his plants. This became a close association including a number of trips together in search of rare plants. At one point, Wally called Klaus about a rare plant he had found in the Skalkaho drainage and Klaus showed up at his door at 5 o'clock the next morning ready to go look at it.
Peter Stickney, at the U. S. Forestry Sciences Lab, became another important source of help with identification and remained a friend for many years. Although he became proficient at finding and identifying plants, Wally had almost no formal botanical training, he had a BA Degree in Psychology from the University of Montana. Wally was allowed to take the U of M Flora of Montana class without charge since he could help other students. The primary advantage for him was access to the microscopes and other botany equipment.
As he grew more knowledgeable, he identified and collected plants from many locations. These included the Sapphire Mountains, Bitterroot Mountains, East and West Forks of the Bitterroot River, Rock Creek (Near Missoula), Salmon River/Challis areas of Idaho, Drummond, Skalkaho drainage, the Blackfoot River area, the Swan Valley and Browns Lake and Georgetown Lake for aquatics. One of his favorites was the Lost Horse drainage in the Bitterroots where on one trip he saw 18 moose. As he grew more familiar with places and plants, he was able to take U.S. Forest Service personnel on a number of field trips.
During his many outings, he camped out, sleeping in the back of his truck and never bothering to stop for or eat lunch. In about 1985, he sold the family home in Missoula and moved to Stevensville where he regularly rode his bike to the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. Then manager, Margaret Anderson, recognizing his expertise, enlisted his help to record the plants growing on the refuge. For three years, Wally worked on this project covering much of the refuge in all seasons. Also while he lived in Stevensville, he met Judy Hoy and did botany work on her ranch southeast of Stevensville, identifying some plants that were new to Montana, including the Little Annual, Ipomopsis Minutiflora. Part of this land is now known as the Willoughby Bluff Natural Area, protected by the Nature Conservancy for the unique plants growing there.
Later Wally would moved to a home in the foothills west of Stevensville and after that to a place on Harvey Lane near Corvallis. During all this time he continued seriously identifying and collecting plants.