Thinking about ‘Harry’
May 18, marked the 40th anniversary since the historic and devastating eruption of Mount Saint Helens. Among the many tragedies of that event, there is one particular aspect and one individual that stands out from the rest.
Mount Saint Helens is a volcanic mountain located in Washington state. It stands in the southwestern part of the state between the cities of Vancouver and Olympia. In late March of 1980, Mount Saint Helens began to belch out a thick column of black smoke and ash hundreds of feet into the blue Washington sky. As the earth around the top of the volcano began to shake and quiver, scientists, seismologists, and geologists, checked and rechecked their seismographs and the data both in their labs and on-site. Within days they all had come to the same conclusion. Mount Saint Helens was about to erupt and explode. Every TV news program across the nation carried the story in their daily programming.
For the entire month of April, the vehicles of the local police, Washington State troopers, Park Rangers, and military helicopters relentlessly broadcast warnings as they scoured the area around the danger zone. The Civil Defense and every TV and radio station in the state interrupted their programming with WARNINGS. Roadblocks with flashing warning signs screamed at every crossroads in the area. Every resort, hiking trail, tourist center, and every store was closed. Near panic ensued as thousands of people desperately fled the area.
Five miles north of the mountain was a secluded summer resort called “Spirit Lake.” This popular but isolated retreat was the longtime home of the 84-year-old caretaker, a man named Harry Trueman. Despite the relentless warnings to do so, Harry refused to leave. His friends, neighbors, the police, and even his sister could not convince Harry to get out. Harry’s stubbornness soon made him a national celebrity. On May 17, 1980, the grinning face of Harry appeared on “Good Morning America” and other national TV programs. Harry boasted to America that, “No one knows more about this mountain than me, and it ‘ain’t’ going to blow. In fact, it don’t dare blow up on old Harry.”
The next morning, on May 18, 1980, Harry cooked his breakfast of bacon and eggs and fed the scraps to the 16 cats he cared for at his cabin home. He finished and went outside and began planting petunias along the edge of the lawn that he had just cut. At 8:32 on May 18, 1980, Mount Saint Helens exploded with a force 500 times greater than the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Vast amounts of volcanic ash, steam, water, and debris were catapulted skyward up to 60,000 feet. All the while, gases, ash, and molten rock raced down the mountain at 200 miles per hour, leveling everything within 75 square miles. Sixty-one people died that day. Among them was Harry Trueman. Harry’s body was never recovered.
I have often wondered what Harry thought as he saw millions of tons of rock vaporized before his eyes and thrust ten miles straight up into the atmosphere? I wonder if, in that millisecond before the concussion hit him, he regretted his foolish pride and stubbornness. I wonder what went through his mind if somehow miraculously Harry survived the shock but gasped in horror as a solid wall of ash and scalding mud, 50 feet high, entombed his cabin, his petunias, his 16 cats, and Harry, himself? I wonder if he struggled or f he spent those moments thinking about what a fool he had been?
But this story makes me also wonder something else. I wonder if one coming day, our country will regret the tens of thousands of innocent babies that we allow to be murdered each year by way of abortion. I wonder if America will one day lament defying God and nature by distorting the very nature of God’s marriage design by legalizing same-sex coupling. I also wonder if one day, we will rue the day that we defied God, biology, genetics, and common sense by legitimizing gender dysphoria and endorsing trans-genderism.
I wonder if one day, we will regret that we have wholly banned God from our schools and other public institutions instead of enthroning the tyrants of humanism and secularism. I wonder as we plunge deeper into savagery and moral nihilism if we will one coming day lament that we allowed our schools, our entertainment industry, our government, and our hypocrisy to murder God in the minds of our children.
We sit by and have uttered little more than a whimper of protest as political radicals steal our God-given freedoms. We despair as multiplied millions of our people are enslaved and debased by alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and other addictions while we still ignore or rebel against God and His word. I wonder if, in eternity, the many who know of the need for turning to Christ for salvation will mourn that they were so arrogant and stubborn as they refused God’s grace and mercies.
I honestly wonder what is in store as the storm clouds gather, and the shaking begins, and we are still filled with our selves and are stubbornly confident that all is well. I wonder if maybe we are thinking just like “Harry” did before May 18, 1980.
William “Ed” Nicholson is pastor of Grace Baptist Chapel in the village of Little Summit. He has earned graduate degrees in Bible and Education and is a life member of the amputee chapter of the Disabled American Veterans. He may be reached at willnpa9@gmail.com.