The Great Bear

When John Salter, of Scottish and Native American ancestry, was 18 he shot his “coming-of-age” bear in the mountains of Arizona. It was a massive specimen that took six bullets to bring down. It wasn’t going to go down easy and definitely not without a fight. Only one of them was going to make it out of those mountains alive. I’m sure some of the Spirit of that animal passed to John because John truly is one of the great bears.

There are some people out there that no matter what they’re going to fight to the bitter end. They’re going to do whatever it takes to make certain they did all they could. You have to admire people like that. It takes a special kind of character to see things through and to never give in on what you know is right. Sometimes there’s a stubbornness to them that can be seen as almost irrational but when you truly understand that person you know it’s just who they are and you probably wouldn’t want them any other way. John Salter is one of those people.

My wife and I took the opportunity to see him and his wife, Eldri this weekend. Life got busy and too many years had passed but when I recently spoke with him on the phone I knew I had to pay him a visit. For several years John had Lupus. The operative word in that sentence is “had”. I guess, genetically, it will always be there but all his blood tests would say otherwise and his doctors couldn’t tell you why. And so we took off for Idaho to pay an old friend a visit.

I had hoped to interview John for the documentary because of his massive involvement in Jackson back in the 1960s but had written that off when I first realized I was going to do this in the Spring of last year but a few weeks ago I wrote a blog post mentioning John and felt impressed to call him. To my surprise he sounded like the old John, the one before Lupus, and I told him as much. He chuckled and said, “Well, didn’t your mother tell you?”

Back in the 90s, I had the privilege of spending a summer with John and Eldri when they were still in North Dakota. John was teaching at the University in Grand Forks and was very active in righting some injustices. He has a long history of that, dating back to his work fighting the mining companies. You spend enough time with someone and they’re bound to either grow on you or send you running in the other direction. We decided we liked each other.

And so, here I was with my wife in John and Eldri’s living room catching up on things when I asked John when he knew things were changing with his Lupus. He said it was around April of last year. I looked at my wife and she smiled back at me.

John and I hold the same belief that things happen for a reason even when we don’t always know why but there’s a Creator and He knows what He’s doing and that’s alright by us. You see, I had written off ever interviewing John for the documentary because of his Lupus (he had been at death’s door at least a couple of times with it) and lamented that fact because, aside from my mother, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, John was the one person I really wanted to interview. So, when I called him several weeks ago you can imagine my surprise when he sounded great and he related his present condition.

Alas, our visit was a short one. We only had a an hour or so since I had to be back in Utah for a shoot that evening but it was the best hour and a half I’ve had in some time. We talked about a lot of things. Some related to the Civil Rights Movement and some were just catching on each other’s lives.

Next to me on a table were two magazines John receives as a member of their organization. I laughed when I saw them because I thought they summed up John pretty well. One was for Lupus and the other was for the NRA.

Loki Mulholland – Writer/Director