Kirk, Cecil H.

Cecil Humphry Kirk was born on October 3, 1899, in Ashland, Wisconsin, to George and Carrie Kirk. The Kirk's moved to Lewistown, Montana, in 1907, where they operated a health resort. Cecil graduated from Fergus County High School in 1917 and then went on to attend the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He left the University to join the Navy during World War I and served at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago. After his time in the service, he returned to the University of Wisconsin, where he received a degree in electrical engineering in 1922.

That same year Kirk began working for the Montana Power Company in Great Falls, where he helped design several new dams and power plants on the Missouri River. Kirk worked his way up through the company, eventually becoming a distribution engineer with the Great Falls Division in 1930. In 1940 he was transferred to Butte to work as a transmission and distribution superintendent and in 1957 he was elected as vice president in charge of electrical transmission and distibution in 1957. Four years later, in 1961, he succeeded T. L. Doran as vice president of operations, a position he held until his retirement from the company in 1964, at the age of 65.

In 1967 he was again working for MPC, as a contract writer. Kirk was retained by the company, for a period of two years, to write a comprehensive history of the Montana Power Company from its earliest inception. The manuscript was completed in 1970, but was never published.

Kirk was married to Louise Bowman in Helena on February 2, 1927. They had two children, Donn Bowman Kirk was born in 1931 and Jone Schoeffel, who was born in 1937. Cecil Kirk died on October 1, 1988, in Butte.