Searing Memories -- Peace Long In Coming To Victims' Families

The dark ash from the blown-out cone of Mount St. Helens casts a pall on Donna Parker's life that may never settle.

Parker's brother Bill, a microwave engineer for a telephone company and an amateur photographer with a love of the outdoors, was one of 57 people who died in the eruption that devastated the mountain 10 years ago today.

Since then, Parker's obsession has been to see to it that the dead are remembered as innocent victims of a natural disaster and not as foolhardy sightseers looking for excitement.

Parker and others who survive those 57 people caught on the mountain that day will get together tomorrow somewhere near Toutle Lake to hold a private memorial service. They'll discuss the black stone tablet they hope to erect someday, somewhere in the shadow of the mountain.

It will be the first memorial to the dead of Mount St. Helens.

Among those who died in the eruption were 10 couples and four children.

The youngest was Kevin Christopher Morris, 7, who died with his family at a campsite at Hoffstadt Creek, 11 miles northwest of the crater.

The oldest victim was Harry Truman, 84, the curmudgeonly proprietor of a lodge on Spirit Lake, five miles from the summit. Truman became famous for refusing to leave his home even when it became apparent pressure in the mountain was building.

Only three of the victims, Truman, Bob Kasewater and Beverly Wetherald, died within the off-limits Red Zone set by the state to keep the public away from the smoldering mountaintop. Those three had property on Spirit Lake and had permission to be there, Parker said.

Many of the dead were near the mountain that day because Mount St. Helens was a traditional playground for them.

Parker's brother and his wife, Jean, died on a small peak between Hanaford Lake and Coldwater Creek, nine miles from the

summit. They had left their Portland home a day or two before the Sunday-morning blast and driven to several sites around the mountain. They stopped at the roadblock on Highway 504, then got back into the car and doubled back to Hanaford Lake.

A roll of film in Bill Parker's camera found near his body included snapshots of the roadblock, the cemetery near Silver Lake where the Parkers' grandparents are buried, and Bill, kneeling beside his tripod.

Roxanne Mansfield's mother and sister died on the mountain that day, too. Mansfield was 18 at the time and her father had died nine months before.

Mansfield had gone to her high-school prom and an all-night party on Saturday evening, May 17. Her mother, Arlene Edwards, 37, had taken photos of her and her date before they left the Edwards home in Portland.

When Mansfield found out the next day that the mountain had erupted, she didn't know her mother and 19-year-old sister Jolene had gone there. She wasn't to find out for days.

Maxine Bowers' son Wally died, too, although technically he still is listed among the missing on Mount St. Helens' slopes.

Wally Bowers was a 20-year logger for Weyerhaeuser. He was working that day for a logging firm under contract to Weyerhaeuser. He needed to earn extra money. His son was about to graduate from high school in Winlock. And his wife, Babe, was in a hospital dying of cancer.

Babe Bowers' cancer and the mountain left the four Bowers children, aged 15 to 20, without parents.

Now they all still toil in small towns in the shadow of the mountain. Corey, the oldest, can't work because he has diabetes. Kim is married and has two children. Jeff works at a factory, building mobile homes. Kevin is a logger.

Logging is in the family's genes. It always is a dangerous vocation, Maxine Bowers noted. She lost her husband in the forest years ago, when a heavy limb fell on him.

Wally Bowers was afraid to be logging with the mountain acting up, his mother said. ``They told the loggers, `You don't like it, just pick up your paycheck and go on down the road,' but they couldn't do that. They needed the work.''

For Parker, Mansfield, Bowers and scores of other survivors, the way to peaceful acceptance of the deaths has been strewn with obstacles.

The families were drained by court cases, demoralized by accounts saying the victims were curiosity seekers and discouraged by having to deal with their grief alone.

The families launched a bitter legal fight against the state and the Weyerhaeuser Co. in 1981. The state was accused of setting its off-limits Red Zone too close to the crater, only a little over five miles away. Weyerhaeuser was accused of negligence in having loggers just outside the zone.

The U.S. Forest Service had drawn a Red Zone around the mountain on April 25, notifying Gov. Dixy Lee Ray that it could not legally close state and private lands outside its jurisdiction. When Ray decreed her Red Zone around the mountain on April 30, the line she drew for the north side of the mountain, where Weyerhaeuser was logging, was identical to the Forest Service line.

Many of the survivors, including Parker, Mansfield and Bowers, still believe Ray set the hazard zone near the mountaintop in order to help Weyerhaeuser log as much land as possible before the mountain erupted.

``It affected neither state lands nor Weyerhaeuser logging operations,'' according to a court document filed by the families' attorneys. The lines, in effect, ``reflected nothing but property lines.''

The families also said in court that state officials had misrepresented the location of the danger zone, telling some newspaper reporters that it extended to Weyerhaeuser's Camp Baker, about 18 miles northwest of the summit.

Cowlitz County officials pleaded with Ray to extend the hazard zone to 20 miles away from the mountain. A proposal to extend it was sent to Ray on Friday, May 16, and was on her desk awaiting her signature when the mountain blew.

Ray never signed the order, but she insisted even in her 1981 report on her fourth year in office that the April 30 executive order ``prohibited anyone from entering the area within 20 miles of the peak.''

The families lost their court battle on almost all counts.

The suit against Weyerhaeuser ran up against a hung jury; the company settled in 1986 by giving each of 14 plaintiffs about $6,000.

The state Court of Appeals ruled in 1988 that the state wasn't to blame for an act of God. The court had the last word in March 1989, refusing to review its earlier decision.

``I'm still very angry,'' Mansfield said. ``I felt ever since this whole thing started that we wouldn't get satisfaction in court. I still can't get over it. I go to therapy every week. Without us, without the death of those people, the state of Washington wouldn't have their tourist center, but they still can't say they made a mistake in letting them up there.''

``I don't know what to say except to express sorrow,'' Tom Ambrose, a Weyerhaeuser attorney, said this week.

``What is it the state could have done?'' Ray asked this week. ``Extending the zone wouldn't have made any difference to anyone. Hundreds of people made a game of getting around the boundaries. I'm not saying the people who died did that, but the general attitude was that the boundaries didn't matter and they could go anywhere as long as they didn't get caught by the State Patrol.''

Such attitudes infuriate the families.

Shortly after the eruption, Ray was quoted in newspapers as saying the dead - one of whom was 17 miles from the blast - were trespassing in a marked hazardous area. President Jimmy Carter, who flew over the mountain to view the damage, picked up on the accusation and repeated it.

``These people died in areas that were open to the public, and the state has never acknowledged that,'' Parker said. ``They should acknowledge that on the 10th anniversary.''

The state will not do that. But the Forest Service will premier a new movie tomorrow at the Silver Lake visitors center, which attracts many of the 1 million tourists who come to view the volcano each year. At Parker's tenacious insistence, the movie, shown hourly, won't categorize the dead as curiosity seekers, as other versions have all these years.

Parker and the others still are galled over what they say was government insensitivity in the confusing days after the mountain blew.

``The coroner called me and told me my mother wasn't there because they couldn't find her body,'' said Mansfield. ``They found my sister and my sister's dog and my mother's dog in the truck, along with their personal belongings. Because they couldn't find my mother right away they told me she'd probably run away and started life over somewhere else.

``They found her body a month later, and I blew my cool.''

Government authorities never called the families together to help them deal with their grief, Parker said.

``That's something that's always done for people, like when they get people together after a plane crash. But they never once let us get together to talk about this thing. We had to go through everything all alone, and some of us didn't know for months what happened to them.''

``It's kind of like being a Vietnam War veteran,'' said Bowers. ``It's like they did something wrong and no one wants to touch us.''

The struggle for the families is far from over.

There still is a dispute over where the memorial designed by Parker should be placed.

The Forest Service wants to put it on Johnston Ridge as soon as the new Highway 504 is rebuilt that far. That will be another three years.

Parker wants to put the memorial near Hanaford Lake ``because that's where people died and where some people are still missing.''

Many of the survivors still live near the mountain, catching sight of its scooped-out cone as they drive to work or do errands. Sometimes they have to endure even more painful sights.

``There's this person who bought my mother's truck, to put it in a sideshow,'' said Mansfield. ``You know, `This is the truck of Jolene and Arlene Edwards.'

``I went up there once and paid 50 cents to see it. I was just livid.

``Sometimes I feel like I have no control. I'm trying to put my life together, but something like this pops up and sets me off again. I know this is just one of the things that will go on all my life and I'm going to have to learn to accept it. It's the 10th anniversary now, and someday I'll have to go through a 25th anniversary. I really dread it.''