My Billy Frank story

A great leader in the cause of civil rights and the care of creation died this week. News of the death of Billy Frank, Jr., brought back a flood of memories of the fish wars in the 1970’s that led up to the famous Boldt decision (U.S. v. Washington) that forever changed the politics of salmon in the Pacific Northwest. It was our regional equivalent of Brown v. The Board of Education and Billy Frank was one of the key leaders who helped to make it happen.

My Billy Frank story dates back to the fall of 1975 when I was serving my internship year with the campus ministry at Pacific Lutheran University. There was a severe fall storm and many of the rivers in western Washington were overflowing their banks including the Nisqually. I was living in the guest room of Hinderlie Hall, a men’s dorm on campus and my room was near the only pay phone in the building (this was long before cell phones and computers!).

One night a call came through from a group of students at The Evergreen State College in Olympia asking for volunteers to drive over to Frank’s Landing to help fill and stack sandbags. I gathered some volunteers from the dorm and we made the 20-minute drive through the pouring rain and began filling sand bags. We joined students who’d been recruited from other area colleges—UPS, PLU, St. Martin’s, and Evergreen. The Evergreen students were the only ones who seemed to be aware of the political significance of Frank’s Landing—home for the extended Frank family and the nerve center of tribal protests that led up to U.S. v. Washington. It was the place where Billy Frank and his family and friends had been arrested numerous times along with people like Dick Gregory, Marlon Brando, and Buffy St. Marie. God bless them but the young men from PLU were mostly oblivious and I, having been in the Northwest for only a few months, had only a vague idea of the significance of the place we were all trying to save from the ravages of the roiling, silt-laden waters of the Nisqually.

When we’d completed our task for the night and were standing around eating cookies and drinking coffee supplied by the local Red Cross, a man with dark hair tied back in a pony tail stood up to a makeshift microphone and began speaking. It was Billy and he was thanking the students as well as providing a brief but colorful history of the fish wars and the importance of Frank’s Landing. The PLU students' eyes got big. Several of them whispered that they’d simply come to help out some poor, flood-stricken Indians and hadn’t realized they were becoming a small part of something much bigger and more significant. If I knew then what I know now, I could have assisted them in processing their experience. As it was, we were each left on our own to reflect on our time on the river.  

I count that night as a significant one in my development as a pastor and a citizen of the Pacific Northwest. I went on to serve in ministries throughout the region and eventually went back to graduate school to earn a degree in Northwest history. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that I’d witnessed a small piece of it being made and met one of its most important players, Billy Frank, Jr.

May the salmon that he so loved flourish again and may his legacy of courage and care for creation live on in the countless people he inspired and was teacher to.  Rest eternal grant him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. jpr