Meet Rose and Don Schwennesen

Rose is managing broker at Partners West Realty, with 20 years of real estate experience in Bigfork, the Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana. Don joined Partners West in 2000 after a news career in Montana, though he and Rose have been lifetime partners for 40 years. Rose was raised 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. Don was born in Chicago, grew up near Philadelphia and studied at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. He began news work at the Hartford Courant and met Rose while stationed in Germany as an Army supply officer. After an extended honeymoon in Europe and North Africa, we settled in the mountains of Montana in 1970. Rose and Don    Rose was a medical technologist for area hospitals and a water chemist 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 was 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 past president of the Flathead Lakers, past president of the Flathead Land Trust and a founding member of the Flathead Valley's Christmas in April program. She currently represents the Lakers on the Flathead Coalition, an organization working to protect Glacier National Park and the upper Columbia watershed from transboundary mining impacts in Canada. Don is a board member and past president of Citizens for a Better Flathead. We also participate in the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce, Bigfork Festival of the Arts, Bigfork Community Trust, the Northwest Montana Fair, Bigfork Christmas Elves volunteers and the Realtors' annual Halloween Food Bank drive, among other activities. Don and Rose We love travel and the outdoors and celebrated the millennium with a six-month trek around Australia and New Zealand. Since then we have had the good fortune to visit Hokkaido, the north island of Japan; the Upper Amazon and Galapagos Islands; and Southeast Asia. We have also camped and hiked hundreds of miles in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and in Montana's splendid wilderness areas. Don co-authored a book on Montana wilderness areas. We have three grown children who also love travel.