Posted on 05/18/2025 8:54:09 PM PDT by logi_cal869
Harry Truman became a modern folk hero 45 years ago for his steadfast refusal to leave his lodge in the shadow of Mount St. Helens, even as experts warned that the volcano in southwestern Washington might erupt.
Reporters covering the rumbling mountain in the spring of 1980 often turned their attention to Truman, describing the 83-year-old business owner and former bootlegger as gruff, stubborn, funny and, above all, fiercely independent.
And those depictions were more or less accurate, said Dan Plute, a Clarkston Heights man who is Truman’s grandson-in-law.
“A lot of people used the word crusty,” Plute said last week. “Hard working, hard drinking — full bore, no matter what he was doing. There was no idle with him.”
Plute was married to Judy (Burnett) Plute, who was Truman’s granddaughter. Judy died of brain cancer at 75 in February 2024.
Dan Plute, 71, said his wife was quite familiar with her grandfather’s cantankerous side; she and her brother, Barry, worked at Truman’s Mount St. Helens Lodge when they were teenagers in the 1960s.
“My wife never lost her love for Grandpa Truman,” Dan said.
She was also protective of his legacy. Judy generally kept off-color stories about Truman to herself and wouldn’t tell new friends about her famous relative — it was usually Dan who brought it up.
Mount St. Helens started showing ominous signs of life in March 1980, with earthquakes and pyroclastic flows. That’s when Truman started brushing off requests, followed by orders, to leave the area, and when the legend of the stubborn man of the mountain started to grow.
- snip -
Ultimately, Truman and the mountain went out together May 18, 1980.
(Excerpt) Read more at lmtribune.com ...
Harry Truman and Mount St. Helens | KATU In The Archives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9TkFVh-m7I
Minute by Minute: The Eruption of Mount St. Helens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArB5Jz2wos&t=2506s
Photo Essay: Visiting The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
I still have a packet of ash that my grandmother gave me. We didn’t get any worth noting where I lived in Idaho, but she was in Bend, OR, and got a layer of it. Hard to believe it was 45 years ago.
Guess it was a different guy
S’okay, I’m feelin’ stronger every day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJy9V9krLdc
Was just thinking of that guy the other day. Wish he had left that mountain before it blew.
RIP Harry.
My cousins in Oregon gave me a Mason jar full of ash from Mount St. Helens not long after the eruption. I still have it.
Watch that first video. In his own words.
I was working on the Mt. Hood National Forest that summer, SE of Portland. Didn’t get much ash from the main eruption, but there was a lesser eruption a couple of months later that coated the area. I never saved any of the ash, though I think one of my brothers still has some.
I heard that the fire crews on the Volcano Fire that year were wearing out brand new chainsaws in about a day. Often wondered if those firefighters later developed lung problems.
My mistake: 2nd vid. Had to do with his wife (start at 1:00).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9TkFVh-m7I
Having camped in tents more than once at Spirit Lake in the 1970’s, I had a chance to meet and talk to Harry Truman. We were living in southwest Washington state when the mountain blew up.
My father-in-law and I once took a canoe from Bear Cove, where we had been tent camping, across to Harry’s lodge. Bear Cove was a canoe-only-access camp site (tiny) beside gigantic, old growth Douglas Fir trees. The trees could have been 150 years old.
It was a paradise of a spot beside the crystal clear waters of the lake. I once swam there and “cold” is a laughable understatement of being in that water when swimming.
Harry Truman was not “crusty.” He was an insufferable prick. He was horribly rude and disrespectful to the two of us who were smiling, friendly strangers without any negative attitude whatsoever. He was drunk when we met him. He acted as if the lake belonged only to him and nobody else even had any right to be there.
When I heard he had been buried under about 600 feet of superheated mud almost instantly upon the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, I immediately laughed at the Divine justice of his fate.
He was not some “folk hero.” He was the epitome of the what anyone could possibly imagine to be a truly mean human being. He was a character right out of a Charles Dickens novel.
I have never met another human being more deserving of being buried alive by an erupting volcano than Harry Truman on Spirit Lake at the foot of Mt. St Helens.
Your take on the man is probably the correct one. But that doesn’t sell newspapers.😉
CC
His take on the man may be correct but as it is written in Proverb 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter”. I for one am glad God sees fit to have mercy on me. Glory to God!
I believe Art Carney played Truman in a movie called St. Helen’s which came out in 1981.
I had heard a similar tale over the years from others. It is unfortunate that such a man commands all of the attention when recalling the event to honor the dead (which most everyone neglects), but I’ve never seen an expose written about the other victims of the eruption, some of whom were just loggers out making a living.
Thanks for sharing.
Forgot to post the only tangible video about the other victims. I have not watched the entire video.
Mount St. Helens: Why They Died - 1982
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVh22EHcnhY
In the mid-60s my older brothers’ Boy Scout troop used to have their summer camp at Spirit Lake. I visited there once, though I never met Harry Truman. You’re right that the water was COLD.
Anyway, when Mount St. Helens was getting active in the spring of 1980, and all the media were making such a big deal about Truman staying there, one of my brothers expressed similar sentiments to yours. He said that Truman was a complete asshole who used to roar around the lake in a big powerboat and deliberately swamp canoes and such with his wake.
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