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Gary Svee is an American author and journalist, known for his Westerns. He was born in Billings, Montana, growing up on the banks of the Yellowstone, Rosebud and Stillwater rivers, and is a graduate of the University of Montana's School of Journalism.
Svee is a former editorial director for the Billings Gazette. He was on the newspaper's staff in 1993, when the town suffered a wave of vicious racial and religious hatred. Citizens who attended a Martin Luther King birthday commemoration returned to their cars to find racist literature on them. Swastikas were painted on a Native American family's home, Ku Klux Klan flyers were openly distributed, the Billings Jewish cemetery was descrated and a brick was hurled through the window of a Jewish family whose six year old son put the family's Menorah in it for Hanukkah.
The people of Billings banded together, with volunteers re-painting the home and ridding it of the hate-filled graffiti, religious groups held marches and those who were not members of a particular religion began attending other services in addition to their own, to show unity and support for each other. The Billings Gazette printed a full page depiction of a Menorah, asking residents to put the page up in their businesses and homes. Svee related how the image was chosen for the paper, saying, "I guess it was a question of looking for an image to put this together. During the second World War, the Danish King is reputed to have come out after the Jewish community was forced to wear stars by the Nazi occupiers, that he was reported to have come out with a yellow star too."
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