FVCC to Host a Celebration of Life for Paul Wachholz
The businessman and philanthropist, who donated more than $10 million to the college, died in July. His life will be honored at the college center — which bears his name — on Sept. 13.
By Mariah Thomas
The Flathead Valley Community College’s Paul D. Wachholz College Center will hold a public celebration of life for its namesake on Sept. 13 at 3 p.m. Doors will open at 2 p.m.
Paul Wachholz, a Kalispell entrepreneur known for his philanthropy in the Flathead Valley, died in Spokane, Wash., on July 28. He was 89.
“Paul Wachholz’s generosity has changed our community,” said Jane Karas, the president of FVCC, in a statement about Wachholz last month. “Paul’s belief in FVCC and the transformative power of community colleges has made things possible that we never would have imagined.”
The businessman found his way to Montana somewhat by chance, when his boss at the Western Bank Corporation sent him to Kalispell to run the Conrad National Bank, which would later become part of First Interstate, in the 1960s. He ended his career in real estate, working as a broker with PureWest after decades of owning his own real estate firm and beverage company, which he eventually sold.
But his career as a businessman began well before adulthood, as he ran newspaper routes and sold laundry soap in his hometown of Wilson, Kan., starting at age 9. He then started a lawn mowing and yard care service when his family moved to Colorado. He previously told the Beacon it was one of his clients for the lawn mowing business — Dr. Carl Collins, a professor from Columbia University — whom he credits with helping him appreciate the value of higher education.
“Dr. Collins became a mentor and was pretty instrumental in my education,” Wachholz told the Beacon in 2023. “I thought yard care was looking like a pretty great career as a teen making good money for that time, but Dr. Collins knew better and made sure I knew it. Meeting Dr. Collins set the stage for changing my life and my ability to earn degrees and be successful in business.”
Wachholz left an indelible impact on FVCC, donating more than $10 million to campus for two facilities that now bear his name: the Paul D. Wachholz College Center, which opened in 2022, and the Wachholz Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, which opened in 2025. The entrepreneurship center aims to provide students with the opportunity to develop their own business and reach their career goals at FVCC.
“I learned the value of community colleges through my upbringing,” Wachholz told the Beacon when the donation to fund the entrepreneurship center was announced in 2023. “The opportunity for success is a mutual partnership, and that’s exactly my thought with FVCC and this new entrepreneurship center. An entrepreneurial education will lead people to be competitive and create new opportunities that wouldn’t ordinarily exist.”
FVCC’s President Karas, in her statement about Wachholz’s passing, lauded both projects, but said Wachholz’s true impact “lives in the students whose paths have been changed and in the opportunities that now exist for our community.”
His philanthropy also included a scholarship fund of about $100,000 for FVCC students, according to a Tuesday press release from the school.
In 2018, Wachholz told the Beacon he hoped his donation to fund the college center would be a way to give back to a community that poured into him.
“Throughout my life, I have not valued money by its worth, but rather by what it can be specifically used for,” Wachholz said. “Investing in FVCC and the College Center is personally very gratifying to me, because it will become a focal point of the expanding college campus, bringing students and community members together.”