What were you thinking?
As the death toll mounts from Hurricane Katrina, and you start wondering why these people didn't evacuate after all the pleas to do so, thoughts turn to arguably the most famous non-evacuee, Harry Truman of Mt. St. Helen's fame:
All he did to become a legend was stay on Mount St. Helens and die.
But there was more to crotchety old Harry Truman than his last stand -- which he really did not want to make, according to family and friends of Truman, who refused to leave his home below the volcano....
A lot of folks feel Truman was simply a crotchety old man who refused to listen to reason, says Barry Murray, who's helping create the Tyee Trail Association's Volcano Loop. "They don't want him to be the icon of the eruption."
Roberta Dickerson, a former Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce director who runs the trail group, says a lot of townfolk tolerate the memorial only "because some feel it helps tourism."
Of course, Truman has defenders.
"We all have many facets to our personality, and he had a whole kaleidoscope," says his niece, Shirley Rosen of Bothell.
Rosen wrote a personal memoir called "Truman of St. Helens: The Man and His Mountain." She called her uncle "a salty curmudgeon who lived his life the way he really wanted to live. He was a tough man with a gentle side."
A lot of folklore isn't true, she said. Truman wasn't an uneducated hermit living in a little cabin in the wilderness, as depicted in a television movie that starred Art Carney. He was a Mossyrock High graduate who shrewdly built up a million-dollar business....
Rosen says Truman's unwillingness to leave the mountain had more to do with protecting his property than making a statement. Others say the headlines contributed to his refusal to come off the mountain -- he felt obliged to live up to his press.
"I think he kind of got himself talked into a Catch-22 situation to stay," Barker said. "He wanted to come down. He was very much afraid of earthquakes.
"He felt, like everyone else, that he would be able to see lava start to ooze down and a news helicopter would come in and scoop him up at the last minute."
Nature had other ideas. The searing blast came at 300 mph.
"One scientist told us Truman probably had time to maybe turn his head," Rosen said....
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