Goodbye, Elmer

Jack Whitney introduced me Elmer Sprunger at a downtown Bigfork cafe in June 1983 and urged me to give Elmer a job.

"He's a great wildlife artist, but what he really wants to be is a political cartoonist," Jack said. "He can draw like nobody you ever met."

Elmer told me he'd drawn a couple of cartoons for the Missoulian, but he'd quit doing them because the Missoulian insisted on specific size drawings. "And worse than that, they don't pay regular," Elmer said.

My wife and I had just bought the Bigfork Eagle, and we were determined to make it the best weekly newspaper in Montana. The heart of a great newspaper is the editorial page, so I was intrigued by the idea of having our own cartoonist. Few newspapers in the nation have their own editorial cartoonist, and none the size of the tiny Eagle.

Even so, I was a bit hesitant — lots of folks think they can write or draw. "Why don't you bring a cartoon by my office, and then we'll talk more," I told Elmer.

The next day, Elmer brought by a cartoon to the Eagle's second-floor office at the Lakehills Shopping Center. I wish I could remember the content of that first cartoon — but I do remember it far exceeded my expectations.

"Love to have your cartoons, but can't pay you much," I told Elmer.

"Don't need much," Elmer said. "Just want to draw cartoon and get paid regularly."

I told Elmer he could draw on any subject he wanted, and I'd try my hardest to never kill — refuse to run — anything he drew, and I never did.

That day we struck the deal that made Elmer the political cartoonist for the Bigfork Eagle. Elmer drew a cartoon for the Eagle every week from the summer of 1983 (with a few pinch-hits from his son, Jerry) until he died last week of lung cancer just weeks before his 88th birthday.

I didn't realize at first what a trouble-maker Elmer was. He was always soft-spoken, easy-going and smiled and chuckled a lot. Over morning coffee and tea at the bowling alley or Streeter's Corner, others usually were far more passionate than Elmer during the never-ending political debates. Elmer made his point with his cartoons.

And he made enemies — Forest Service officials, state foresters, developers, Realtors, merchants, school officials, governors, senators and other elected (mostly Republican) officials. I'm pretty sure that if former Gov. Stan Stephens had an enemies list, Elmer would have been No. 1 on it. Elmer relished getting under the skin of the powerful.

"Got any letters to the editor because of my cartoon?" Elmer regularly asked me. If the answer was no, Elmer would say, "I gotta try harder."

The most delighted I ever saw him was when I gave him the idea of drawing a game warden wearing a badge that said "Montana Department of Shrimp, Wildlife and Parks." That idea came after the Eagle confirmed that the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks had introduced Mysis shrimp into Flathead Lake — and killed off all the lake's kokanee salmon, the No. 2 fishery in the state. Elmer spent hours making sure he got the warden's uniform copied correctly to the tiniest detail — except for the shoulder patch that swapped fish for shrimp.

Elmer had many other great cartoons. My personal all-time favorite showed Bigfork's superintendent of schools driving a vehicle with all the wheels coming off. The superintendent called Sprunger at home and yelled at him. Elmer's response: "I wasn't sure his wheels were really coming off until he called me. After he called, I knew for sure."

Elmer, a native Montanan, loved the environment and wildlife. Bears, I think, were his favorite characters in his cartoons. One of his best cartoons — "Know your grizzlies" — was drawn in two panels. In the first panel, Elmer drew a smiling grizzly labeled "your everyday (untrapped) predictable grizzly. The second panel is labeled "your manhandled, chicken-killing, mean grizzly." The mean grizzly is drawn with radio collars, tags, USDA inspection stickers and a syringe sticking in its behind.

One of the great controversies of the 1980s was the effort to clear-cut the Swan Face of the Swan Mountains. Elmer liked to use the Smokey Bear caricature to pick on the Forest Service. The all-time best cartoon Elmer drew (my opinion) showed Smokey — wearing a USDA hat and carrying a clear-cut license in his back pocket — chasing a swan with an ax and net. The cartoon shows Smokey running over a little guy labeled "public opinion" and a groundhog saying: "It”s a bear gone bad!" Forest Service officials were outraged. Elmer — trouble-maker that he was — was delighted.

Lot's of memories — too many. Pain in my heart, tears on my cheek.

Last Thursday night, I dreamed about Elmer. The next day, his son Jerry called to say his Dad had died. While I slept, while he died, he came into my dreams to say goodbye.

Goodbye, my trouble-making friend, good soul and Montana's greatest political cartoonist.

(Marc Wilson was editor and publisher of the Bigfork Eagle from 1983-to 1996.)