Harry Truman and Mt St Helens

Thursday, May 11, 2000

By MIKE BARBER Mail author
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

All he did to become a legend was stay on Mount St. Helens and die.

But there was more to crotchety old Harry Truman than his last stand -- which he really did not want to make, according to family and friends of Truman, who refused to leave his home below the volcano.

Truman remains an icon of the eruption 20 years after he died at his Mount St. Helens Lodge on the shore of Spirit Lake.

Truman became the focus of the national media in the days before the eruption, a rugged individual who enjoyed the solitude of the raw frontier, true to himself as he ended 83 years of life with one last act of defiance.

To others, he was a rude old crank who would refuse to sell a candy bar to a kid.

In Castle Rock, townfolk even now debate whether they want to keep the memorial to Truman at the entrance to town.

A lot of folks feel Truman was simply a crotchety old man who refused to listen to reason, says Barry Murray, who's helping create the Tyee Trail Association's Volcano Loop. "They don't want him to be the icon of the eruption."

Roberta Dickerson, a former Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce director who runs the trail group, says a lot of townfolk tolerate the memorial only "because some feel it helps tourism."

Of course, Truman has defenders.

"We all have many facets to our personality, and he had a whole kaleidoscope," says his niece, Shirley Rosen of Bothell.

Rosen wrote a personal memoir called "Truman of St. Helens: The Man and His Mountain." She called her uncle "a salty curmudgeon who lived his life the way he really wanted to live. He was a tough man with a gentle side."

A lot of folklore isn't true, she said. Truman wasn't an uneducated hermit living in a little cabin in the wilderness, as depicted in a television movie that starred Art Carney. He was a Mossyrock High graduate who shrewdly built up a million-dollar business -- despite his unorthodox customer relations.

Truman owned 54 acres of prime land and a resort. He had a monopoly -- 100 boats for rent on the lake, Rosen said. "He was a smart man and a hard worker."

He traveled, going to Detroit to pick up his pink, custom-made 1956 Cadillac at the factory, visiting New York and driving cross-country with his wife and friends.

But his life before the volcano rumbled was far more interesting than the act that made him famous.

Born in West Virginia in 1896, Truman came West with his family of self-sustaining mountain folk who quickly took to logging, hunting and farming. On his way to France during World War I, a German U-boat torpedoed his troopship. An Army airplane mechanic, he learned to fly.

After the war, he married, had two children and ran a gas station in Chehalis -- until Prohibition made bootlegging booze a paying concern. He ran rum to brothels from San Francisco to Canada, Rosen said.

Truman's bootlegging eventually sent him and his young family into hiding at Spirit Lake in 1926, after he ran afoul of gangsters making a hostile takeover. His homesteading supplies included a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun.

In many ways, Truman was as unpredictable as the land under him. He could show frontier hospitality, then on a whim toss someone out because he didn't like their looks.

Tales around Castle Rock have him backing up his edicts with the show of a gun.

"He could be meaner than a toad at some times, but I remember that he was also encouraging in a kind of you-can-do-it-kid way," Rosen said.

Verdant Spirit Lake attracted interesting outsiders to Truman's door. In 1936, legendary movie producer Jack Warner shot "God's Country and the Woman" in the backcountry. His crew stayed at Truman's lodge, where Warner and Truman traded shots of bourbon.

Running the lodge wasn't Truman's only source of support. His part-time work included poaching bear and elk, flying in seaplanes loaded with illegal booze from Canada and cooking up "Panther Pee" -- his own brand of moonshine -- at hidden stills, Rosen said.

In his 54 years at the foot of the mountain, Truman also carved some outstanding friendships. One was formed in 1953 when he turned away his most famous guest, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

When a rumpled old guy walked into his lodge, Truman instructed Rosen's sister, Elaine, to "tell the old coot that if he wants a cabin, we don't have any."

When Douglas left, men nursing beers nearby told Truman who he had just given the bum's rush. Shocked, Truman chased after Douglas and convinced him to return.

Truman was married three times, divorcing twice and outliving his cherished third wife of 30 years, Eddie, who was his match in fiber and tenacity. He fathered two children with his first wife, Helen Hughes, the daughter of a mill owner.

After Eddie's death in 1975, Truman fell into depression and regularly took flowers to her grave. Always a fan of Coca-Cola and Schenley's bourbon, his drinking increased.

Just before St. Helens came to life in March 1980, Truman had been slowed by a series of mishaps and seemed to be deteriorating, said George Barker, who was the Skamania County Sheriff's resident deputy at Spirit Lake.

"That winter I was more concerned about an elderly guy staying warm and having food; he was getting older and getting tired," Barker said.

When the mountain started acting up, Truman seemed to come alive as well -- especially when reporters started coming in on the helicopters that would land near his lodge.

"When they began coming around, he got another shot in life," Barker said. "He enjoyed the attention."

Rosen says Truman's unwillingness to leave the mountain had more to do with protecting his property than making a statement. Others say the headlines contributed to his refusal to come off the mountain -- he felt obliged to live up to his press.

"I think he kind of got himself talked into a Catch-22 situation to stay," Barker said. "He wanted to come down. He was very much afraid of earthquakes.

"He felt, like everyone else, that he would be able to see lava start to ooze down and a news helicopter would come in and scoop him up at the last minute."

Nature had other ideas. The searing blast came at 300 mph.

"One scientist told us Truman probably had time to maybe turn his head," Rosen said.

Moments later, Spirit Lake was buried by landslides and mudflows.

"We figure he's 150 feet under the (present) lake," Rosen said. "His pink Cadillac, 16 cats, everything is buried with him -- along with probably a lot of loot" from the lodge safe.

"There's no way to get to it," Rosen said. "He took it all with him -- not a lot of people can say that. And I say, ‘Good for him.' "