Last Mann Gulch survivor passes

SANDPOINT — Bob Sallee was fresh out of Sandpoint High School when he dropped into a tragic piece of U.S. History.

Sallee fibbed about his age when he was 16 to snag a job clearing trail for the U.S. Forest Service’s Sandpoint Ranger District. Impressed by his size and fitness, managers suggested that he join the smokejumpers, the airborne wildland fire-fighting unit that parachutes into remote areas to battle wildfires.

He graduated from SHS in 1949 and at the age of 17 was deployed to a seemingly routine conflagration that would turn out to be anything but.

“His first fire was the Mann Gulch Fire. His first plane ride, even, and he had to jump out of it,” said his sister, Theodora, referring to the Montana fire that would claim 13 firefighters’ lives.

Sallee was one of only three survivors of the deadly conflagration. He was also the youngest man on the crew.

Sallee passed away on Monday in Spokane Valley, Wash., due to complications from open-heart surgery. He was 82 and the last living survivor of the Mann Gulch Fire.

The fire broke out following a lightning strike in the Helena National Forest on Aug. 5, 1949. It promptly blew up after being stoked by high winds.

The group of 16 firefighters — 15 smokejumpers and a fire guard who was already on the ground when the fire started — quickly found their escape overrun with flames.

Sallee and Walter Rumsey bolted up a 45-degree slope and made their way to a rock slide where there was nothing to burn.

“The fire jumped them and roared down the other side of the mountain. That almost killed them because of the oxygen and heat,” Theodora said.

A third survivor, Wagner “Wag” Dodge, escaped death by starting an escape fire.

“He never feared anything again in his life,” Theodora said of her brother. “It was a horrific experience, but he went back and fought other fires, jumped out of planes again and continued to do his job.”

It took years for her brother to open up about his ordeal, but eventually did so at the urging of his smokejumper friends — for their sake and his.

The fire went on to become the subject of a well-received book by Norman Maclean called “Young Men and Fire.”

Sallee and Rumsey took Maclean to the spot where they sought refuge while he was researching the 1992 book, but Theodora said the author hewed to Forest Service records rather than the eyewitness accounts.

“Bob was never real fond of that book. He said, ‘It’s a good read, but it’s not accurate,’” Theodora recalls.

Bob was born in Willow Creek, Mont., but relocated to Bonner County’s Grouse Creek as child when his father purchased a dairy there.

The tragedy at Mann Gulch loomed in Bob’s life, but did not define it.

He went on to start a family and became a successful paper mill consultant who traveled the world helping companies open factories.

He was also an industrious man who built two homes, a sailboat and a houseboat.

“He was a remarkable man of integrity and high morals. If he gave you his word, you could count on it,” said Theodora.

Bob also had a knack for numbers. When Theodora was a teen, she was presented with a math problem that required a calculation involving light years.

“He did it in his head. He reeled out this unbelievably long number and I wrote it down,” she said. “Then I laboriously figured it out by hand and he was right.”