Eldon E. Diettert – Above average Missoula boy

 

The article below can be found at the National Smokejumper Association website – Killed in the Line of Duty.

 

 

Eldon E. Diettert (Missoula ’49) – Aug. 5, 1949 Eldon trained in Missoula in 1949 and died with 11 other Missoula jumpers in the Mann Gulch Fire.

 

An honor roll Forestry student at the University of Montana, he’d been called away from his 19th birthday luncheon to go to the fire.

 

The following is from Some of the Men of Mann Gulch, Starr Jenkins, 1993:

 

This account of Eldon’s life was written by his brother, Gerald A. Diettert, M.D.: Eldon was born Aug. 5, 1930, in Moscow, Idaho, the second son of Reuben and Charlotte Diettert. His father was an assistant professor in Botany at the University of Idaho, his mother, a housewife.

 

Eldon was the only one in the family who had naturally curly hair and mother allowed it to grow without cutting until it was shoulder length (about like Shirley Temple’s).

 

Frequently the mailman would tease Eldon about this, calling him a “little girl.” One day when Eldon was about three, following such taunting, he kicked the man in the shins and proclaimed, “I’m not a little girl.”

 

When he was four, I took him to the Saturday morning movie series, “Buster Brown and his Dog,” several times. Eldon always cried because he was afraid of “the dog” and had to be returned home, much to my disgust.

 

When Eldon was five, the family moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where his father returned to school to obtain his Ph.D. in Botany. During this time, the family lived in several apartments. While father was in school, mother did custodial work at the School of Dentistry. Father did his doctoral thesis on sagebrush and engaged his two sons in sanding and polishing sections of sagebrush for his project.

 

The family spent their summers on Grandfather Diettert’s farm near North Judson, Ind., where grandmother tried to fatten the brothers on cream and whole milk and gave them chickens to raise, then served them the birds at dinner before their departure for home at summer’s end. Some time was also spent on Grandfather Thompson’s farm near Lafayette, Ind.

 

Two years later, in 1937, the family moved to Missoula, Mont., where father became a member and subsequently chairman of the Botany Department at the University of Montana. Soon after this move, both brothers obtained magazine routes, selling such periodicals as Liberty, True Confessions and True Detective. Eldon continued his route (actually an area of town considered to be his “property” to solicit for customers) throughout grade school and was very conscientious and punctual with his customers. Some of the money earned went to supplement the family income, but part was saved “for college.”

 

At Paxson Elementary School, Eldon was an excellent student and received high marks. He was well liked by his teachers and fellow students. In contrast to his brother, who was three years older and very protective of him, he never got into any fights.

 

He was a member of Cub Scout Pack 1, Den 2 but did not continue in the Boy Scout program. He participated in a music program at the university, learning to play the clarinet. During summers, the family picked huckleberries to supplement their income.

 

Another adventure in the woods occurred when he was about nine. He and his brother climbed about 2,000 feet to a saddle in Mount Sentinel just east of the campus and cut down a Christmas tree that measured about 4 inches through at the butt. The top 15 feet was carried home where father shortened it again so it would fit into the house.

 

Eldon liked to build model airplanes powered by rubber bands, and after they had crashed and been repaired repeatedly, they were set on fire and launched from the second-story bedroom window to “go down in flames.” Luckily the house did not burn down from these aerial funeral pyres.

 

Eldon’s sister, Doris Jean, was born in 1939. Over the next 10 years, Eldon became her chief protector, looking after her every need and taking her to movies and other local events.

 

During the summers at age nine and ten, Eldon helped me mow and water neighborhood lawns. Sometimes the grass was so tall Eldon pulled on a rope tied to the mower while I pushed. Eldon took over the lawn jobs on his own when 11 and 12.

 

Following this, he worked intermittently after school and summers at the K&W Grocery Store, delivering groceries and stocking shelves. He was studious in high school and, though he was tall, 6-foot-3 and very strong, he did not participate in sports.

 

Our family took vacation trips to Glacier National Park and other camping spots. With his father’s encouragement, Eldon became an avid dry-fly trout fisherman in his teens.

 

In the summers of 1947 and 1948 he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the Blister Rust Control program at Camp Nowhere in northern Idaho. By the fall of 1948 he had decided that forestry would be his calling and he enrolled at the University of Montana, where he continued to be a scholar and was on the high honor roll each quarter.

 

Father bragged that Eldon was one of the best forestry students he had ever taught, but father was felt to be a bit prejudiced.

 

Eldon was very excited about and challenged by the smokejumper program and viewed it as a great opportunity in his chosen career. He was called away from his 19th birthday luncheon to go to the Mann Gulch fire. In the fall of 1949, Wag Dodge (MSO-41) took me, Eldon’s brother, up to Mann Gulch to view the fire scene and the site of Eldon’s death. I realize now what an emotional strain that must have been on Wag.

 

In Young Men and Fire, Maclean referred to a family that never spoke about their loss after the fire. I believe that was our family. In deference to my mother’s grief, the fire was never discussed and one treaded lightly in even recalling episodes in his life – a real shame, and unfair to him and his goodness, and unfair to all of us in remembering and talking about his short time with us with happiness.

 

Eldon Diettert did not live long enough to do any noteworthy accomplishments. His story is really that of an above-average American boy growing up in the Depression years, with his great promise unfulfilled. One sad mistake took away his life.