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Last Mann Gulch Survivor Dies

by Kristen Cates (Great Falls Tribune) |

The last of the three men who survived the deadly Mann Gulch fire of 1949 has died.

For nearly 65 years, Robert Sallee survived a fire that killed 13 others just north of Helena near the Gates of the Mountains and was once labeled the deadliest forest fire in U.S. history. He was always reluctant to share his story, according to his son Eric Sallee. Robert Sallee died Monday at a hospital in Spokane. He was 82.

“He never talked about it,” Eric Sallee said of his dad.

But as years went on and Robert moved from Sandpoint to Lewiston, Idaho; then Spokane, Missoula, Portland and back to Spokane with most of his career spent in the paper mill industry, Eric said his dad sort of accepted the fact he had an important part of Montana and the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire history.

He survived the fire on Aug. 4, 1949, along with smokejumper Walter Rumsey and fire foreman Wagner Dodge, while 11 other smokejumpers and one forest service employee died. Rumsey and Sallee survived because they climbed to a rock ridge and found shelter. Dodge set an escape fire and yelled to get other smokejumpers to join him, but communication failed to reach the others and Dodge laid down in the ashes while the larger fire burned around him.

Robert Sallee was just 17 when the fire happened and had recently graduated from high school. Eric said his dad had been working for the forest service since he was 15 and had just entered the somewhat-recently-created smokejumpers program that summer after graduation. The Mann Gulch fire was his first fire jump, Eric said. What was even more astonishing for him to learn was three weeks later, his dad jumped on another fire and came back the next summer and jumped a few more times. He quit after that next summer, went back to school for a short time, got married and started a family while working in the paper mill industry with a few other career stints in between, Eric said.

Eric Sallee said he believes some of his dad’s reluctance came from the fact he had to testify at hearings afterward and families of the victims questioned the decisions made in the gulch that day for years after the 13 died. Robert Sallee told his son none of his testimony or questions would ever bring the other 13 men back.

Though he didn’t talk about it much, Eric said he had known since he was a kid his dad had a role in that fire and after Wagner died in the early 1950s, he and Rumsey were the two often interviewed for articles in publications such as Life magazine.

“Then Norman Maclean came calling,” Eric Sallee said.

Rumsey died in the midst of Maclean’s research, so it became Robert Sallee’s duty to offer detailed recollections, which made their way into Maclean’s book “Young Men and Fire.” He made a few trips to Mann Gulch, too.

Forest Service officials have long held they learned valuable lessons in fire management from the Mann Gulch fire. Even though his dad went on to have a career in the paper and pulp mill industry, he always had an affection for the forest service and the smokejumpers program. Later in life, he accepted his role in history, but Robert never did try to understand how he, Rumsey and Dodge were the only three to survive.

“He would tell you there was no explanation for what happened that day,” Eric Sallee said. “It just wasn’t his day (to die). I know that’s how he felt about it.”