| Salt Lake City, Utah Dream Comes True for
Montana Kids
John Hollenhorst reports for KSL
TV & Radio, Salt Lake City
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Have you ever heard of Twin Bridges, Montana? It's a few miles up the road from Dillon, with barely enough people to fill a small movie theater.
But some kids there proved you can follow your dreams, all the way to Salt Lake City. News Specialist John Hollenhorst reports.
For three brief days, a house in South Jordan looked like a college dorm or a
frat house, with a busload of kids coming and going.
"We love having a crowd," Lois Brown says.
It's the senior class from Twin Bridges, Montana, temporarily filling up the house of one of the kids' grandparents.
Myron Brown admits, "Well, it took me awhile to understand Montanian. But I can understand them now."
Lois and Myron Brown have about 30 extra mouths to feed, counting kids and grown-up advisors.
"It's just like cooking in the army," Myron says.
Between bouts of basketball, and watching Kung Fu movies, they're going to the Olympics.
Teran Sewell of Twin Bridges told us, "It's been a blast. I went to snowboarding and men's hockey. It was awesome."
Realizing the Salt Lake Olympics would hit in their senior year, they started laying plans long ago.
"Five years at least," according to senior class advisor Karen Degel. "We went to the board when they were freshmen and asked permission."
R.J. Lowder says, "We though we'd enjoy it, something we'd remember and pass on to our kids."
To make it happen, they had to raise money. Years of bake sales, raffles and concession stands.
With the town's support, nearly the entire senior class made the trip to Salt Lake.
"The total population is about 400 people," explains Colt High. "And our high school
enrollment is about 90."
And now they're having the time of their life. So far.
Julia Clark says, "Since we come from a small town, it's the big-city life, not just the Olympics, that we get to enjoy."
When bedtime comes, it's beds for grownups, sleeping bags for kids.
"We could have stayed in a hotel and everyone would have had a bed," says Rob Holden. "But we wouldn't have been able to hang out in the basement, everybody together. This is better."
Good night, Utah. Good night, Montana. Sweet dreams do come true.
"I don't think we'll ever top this," Degel says.
One of the big thrills for some of the kids was to watch home-state hero Eric Bergoust compete in men's freestyle.
The total costs of their trip is about $7,000. They had to sell a lot of brownies to come up with that.
© Copyright KSL
TV & Radio, Salt Lake City, reproduced by permission.
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