Former Montana State University president Carl McIntosh. Photo courtesy of MSU News Service.

Note: Former Montana State University presidents Carl McIntosh and Bill Tietz were longtime friends who met regularly for coffee and conversation. Those meetings were to be the subject of a Mountains and Minds feature. Therefore, writer Evelyn Boswell was present during one leisurely get-together, which proved to be one of their last. Following their meeting, McIntosh's health deteriorated and he died Jan. 19 at his Bozeman home, his daughter at his side. He was 94.

Carl McIntosh, with a pile of clippings and correspondence beside him, was armed for another wide-ranging discussion with Bill Tietz.

The eighth and ninth Montana State University presidents were about to have coffee on a nice November day, and McIntosh waited in his Bozeman condominium for Tietz's arrival. The two, who had known each other for more than 30 years, met every few weeks for the past couple of years. Whenever one or the other had the urge and enough "accumulated enigmas," he called the other. Sometimes a baking spree by Tietz's wife, Gwen, inspired a meeting. Coffee talks generally started at 10 a.m. or 2:30 p.m. and lasted about an hour.

"Beware of veterinarians bearing gifts," Tietz said as he showed himself in, carrying a bag of chocolate chip shortbread.

Tietz was dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University before becoming MSU's ninth president in 1977. Now 82, he retired in 1990 but remains active in the community and continues to participate in MSU events such as the 2007 ceremony at which the Animal Resources Center was renamed in his honor. In August 2008, he spoke at the naming ceremony for the Jutila Research Laboratory and Johnson Family Livestock Facility.

McIntosh, 94, was MSU's eighth president, serving from 1970 to 1977. He began his career in higher education as an instructor of speech and became acting department head at Park College in Missouri. Before he was MSU's president, he was president of Idaho State College and California State University, Long Beach. An avid reader who kept up with MSU and the wider world, he lived alone with the help of a walker, a Lifeline button, Meals on Wheels (delivered by 95-year-old volunteer Marie Gambill), Bozeman Public Library deliveries, and friends who picked up his groceries. He returned to the public eye in 2008 after donating his boyhood beetle collection to MSU in honor of the late Richard Hurley, his friend, neighbor and associate curator of the Montana Entomology Collection. At the time, Mike Ivie, MSU entomologist and curator of the Montana Entomology Collection, said the collection included at least one specimen that had become extinct since McIntosh collected it as a boy in the Redlands, Calif., area.

Before this day's coffee talk, Tietz pulled clean plates from McIntosh's dishwasher, placed shortbread on each, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. McIntosh began by summarizing letters he received since their last session and reading aloud from the book, Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy. The passage talked about Antarctic-born dogs that didn't know how to lap water until they were taught, which resulted in comments about nature and nurture and led eventually to Tietz asking, "Are you happy where the world is going today?"

"Not particularly," McIntosh replied.

McIntosh was curious about piracy in the 21st century. Pirates had been robbing ships off the coast of Somalia and targeting canoeists on rivers.

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