Don & Rose Schwennesen

Rose is managing broker at Partners West Realty, with 17 years of real estate experience in Bigfork, the Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana. Don joined Partners West eight years ago after a news career in Montana, though he and Rose have been lifetime partners for nearly 40 years.

Rose grew up in Walnut Creek near San Francisco, studied microbiology at University of California Davis and worked in biochemistry research in Europe, where she and Don met and were married in 1969. Don was born in Chicago, grew up near Philadelphia and studied at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. He was a journalist at the Hartford Courant before joining the Army as an officer candidate and spending three years stationed in Germany as an Army supply officer. After an extended honeymoon in Europe and North Africa, Rose and Don settled in the mountains of Montana in 1970.

Rose did lab work for area hospitals and water chemistry for the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station before starting her real estate career. Don was first licensed in real estate in 1972 but soon returned to journalism as a regional daily newspaper reporter and weekly newspaper publisher until 1999. We also operate a small organic-style cherry orchard and grape vineyard nine miles south of Bigfork overlooking Flathead Lake, and we are experienced with the Flathead orchard business.

Bigfork is an unincorporated village that prides itself on volunteerism. Rose is a long-time board member and past president of the Flathead Lakers, a group dedicated to protecting water quality. She is a past president of the Flathead Land Trust and a founding member of the Flathead Valley's Christmas in April program. Don is past president of Citizens for a Better Flathead, traffic control coordinator for the Bigfork Festival of the Arts and a regular blood donor. We also participate in the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce, Bigfork Development Company (a non-profit community development trust), the Northwest Montana Fair, Bigfork Christmas Elves volunteers and the Realtors' annual Halloween Food Bank drive, among other activities.

We love travel and the outdoors and celebrated the millennium with a six-month trek around Australia and New Zealand. More recently we toured Hokkaido, the north island of Japan, and the upper Amazon and Galapagos Islands of Peru and Ecuador. We have also camped and hiked hundreds of miles in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and in Montana's splendid wilderness areas. We have three grown children who also love travel, one in Fort Worth, one in Sweden and one right here in Montana working for the Forest Service.