Sprunger, beloved local artist, dies

By MIKE RICHESON

Bigfork Eagle

Elmer Sprunger, a renowned wildlife painter and cartoonist for the Bigfork Eagle, died Aug. 22 after fighting lung cancer for six months.

His political cartoons have run each week in the Bigfork Eagle since 1983. Sprunger's work often used a combination of humor, pointed criticism and timelessness that made him both a local icon and rabble-rouser.

Sprunger's cartoons often got under the skin of government officials. A logging cartoon once upon a time prompted the Forest Service to reconsider placing Sprunger's name on the Whitney-Sprunger Trail in Point Pleasant.

His cartoons were also published in the Whitefish Pilot, the Hungry Horse News and The Missoulian.

More than 70 years of cartoon sketchings and oil paintings created by Bigfork's Elmer Sprunger have provided insight into his long life in northwestern Montana.

Born Sept. 13, 1919, Sprunger lived away from his native northwest Montana only 12 years from his early 20s to mid-30s. He was raised on Swan Lake, and his young life was influenced by the playground that was the surrounding wilderness and the work provided by Jim Woodard of Anaconda Copper Kings fame. After spending a short time helping construct the Kootenai Lodge, Sprunger's father served 42 years as the caretaker for Woodard's Swan Lake lodge, The Cedars - today known as the Cedar Bay Lodge.

Swan Lake provided Sprunger with his first job - catching cutthroat trout for Woodard's guests.

"I'd catch fish and have them all cleaned nice with the heads on like they wanted, put them on a platter real nice and they had their fish," Sprunger said in an interview last September. Sprunger said that work earned him $20.

"A kid during the Depression to get 20 bucks, holy smoke, that lasted me all winter."

After graduating from Bigfork High School in 1938, Sprunger was offered an art scholarship to New York University, but he declined the offer because he didn't have enough money to get to New York.

Instead, Sprunger got a job with the Montana Power Company around Flathead Lake after he married Marie Svejkovsky in 1940. By age 21, Sprunger and Marie left Swan Lake and lived in Bigfork, Polson and even on Wild Horse Island while Sprunger worked for the electric company.

A trip to the west coast to secure better work kicked off Sprunger's 12-year hiatus from Montana. In those years, Sprunger served his country in World War II and put food on the table for his wife and two daughters working as part of a logging and construction crew and in a Bremerton, Wash., shipyard.

It was in the service where Sprunger got some of his first work as an artist. His status as a married man with two underage children enabled him to do extra duty work, painting promotional posters for traveling USO MidPac shows in Hawaii. In the daytime he trained for landing on Japan. At night he made posters. He also made cartoons for the Redlander - the Army paper.

Sprunger also drew cartoons depicting the crew of each of his places of employment. A cartoon of the Scofield Barracks in Hawaii showed everyone counting their points to see when they could go home. A cartoon of a colorful crew booming logs in a Bremerton logging bay showed men balancing on logs with facial expressions defining a slight debacle - Sprunger's character is visible only as two boots plunging into the bay after he fell of his log.

Sprunger's artistic talents were used during 15 years at the Anaconda Aluminum Company in Columbia Falls, as well, where he worked as a sign painter, designed graphs and supplied the plant's workers with a weekly cartoon on safety issues.

Around 1970, Sprunger devoted himself to art, which he considered a pretty big gamble.

His paintings have graced the C.M. Russell auction in Great Falls many times, and the artist and his paintings have been showcased by numerous publications throughout the years including a 1979 feature in Bigfork's Montana Standard Times, and a 1974 piece in the Daily Inter Lake. He appeared in the Flathead Valley Outdoor Journal in 1979 and in the Spring 2001 edition of Montana Living.

Stoneybrook Press published "Elmer Sprunger, Wildlife Artist." The book "Eagle's Eye" is full of Sprunger's cartoons. Sprunger illustrated "Montana Bob," a book of tall tales and actual accounts of Bob Salzman, Sprunger and Duane "Babe" Mitchell doing what they did best in their youth - young boy antics.

Friends and family will gather at 11 a.m. on Thursday at the United Methodist Church in Bigfork. A potluck reception will follow at 2 p.m. at the Elks Lodge in Kalispell.