Decades before her work to save and restore the 10th Street bridge in Great Falls, Arlyne Reichert was still “The Bridge Lady.” As a teenager growing up in Buffalo, New York, Reichert dated a man whose father was a supervisor at Niagara Falls during construction of the Rainbow International Bridge that spans the Niagara River. She recounted in a 2020 StoryCorps chat that the supervisor let her traverse the catwalks of the landmark-in-progress.
“Two weeks later, Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, christened it,” Reichert said in the 2020 interview. “And the article in the paper, the Buffalo Evening News, said she was the first woman on the bridge, and I said, ‘Oh, no.’ I was on that bridge while it was being constructed.
” Just a few years after that, in 1946, Reichert first laid eyes on the 10th Street bridge in Great Falls while riding into town on a train to start a life with her new husband Harold. She recalled in 2020 that the bridge, with its arch supports that reflect off the water, was a lovely sight. It still spans the Missouri River today because of The Bridge Lady.
Reichert worked for decades to save and then restore the bridge as a Great Falls landmark, earning her the nickname. Her daughter Cheryl has said that the work required Reichert to be a plaintiff, community organizer, nonprofit founder, grant writer and seven-figure fundraiser. A close companion of Arlyne Reichert, Jack Stimpfling, took this portrait around 1979.
It was a remarkable.