Bomb blast reverberates 35 years later
Bill Wassmuth was on the phone with a friend when the bomb went off.
On Sept. 15, 1986, before midnight, someone had placed a bomb, rigged with shrapnel, in a trashcan near his back door.
The blast shredded siding, blew out windows, crumpled a screen door and launched shrapnel through a metal garage door of a neighboring house. A man two blocks away thought a plane had crashed.
Eight hours later, when I arrived at the scene, Bill was dazed and exhausted. He had slept an hour. Local police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had combed the area in the early hours and left. Bill suspected, and later would be proven correct, that racists connected with the Aryan Nations compound, north of Hayden Lake, had targeted him.
Two years earlier, Bill, then the priest of St. Pius X Catholic Church, had agreed to lead the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. He and other task force leaders had fielded anonymous threats since. Insiders joked that Bill was picked for the post because he was single and lived in a brick house.
No one was laughing on that autumn morning 35 years ago.
As we surveyed the structural damage, Bill, then 45, admitted he was scared but wouldn’t be intimidated by the bungled attack. He wondered why his assailant(s) didn’t simply ring the doorbell. He would have answered and been more vulnerable.
“It was senseless violence and destruction,” Bill told me. “That’s frustrating — scary.”
Two weeks later, racists set off three bombs in Coeur d’Alene — at the old U.S. Courthouse, Gibbs Mercantile and Jax Family Dining. A fourth bomb, duct-taped in a tin can, was found undetonated atop the military recruiting office, across from the federal building.
Four supremacists would be caught and sentenced for the bombings and other crimes.
The bombs united the community behind Bill’s task force. Such was the outraged response that the city of Coeur d’Alene would receive the first — and possibly only — community award for human rights from the New York-based Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States.
Bill would quit the priesthood, marry and direct a regional human rights group. He was 61 when Lou Gehrig’s disease claimed him in August 2002. He lived to see a civil trial bankrupt the Aryan Nations.
Something Bill said on that fall morning remains with me. It captures the spirit of the bowed but unbeaten human rights warrior.
Sifting through the damage, he paused, smiled sadly, and described the incident “as an attempt to remodel my house.”
Proper etiquette?
Is it OK to let your kids play TV/movies aloud on a phone/iPad in an upscale restaurant? Facebooks Britt Thurman of Coeur d’Alene. She faced this problem at an Italian eatery recently. Britt isn’t ranting. She’s sympathetic. “I wholeheartedly appreciate and respect that it’s hard to take kids to a restaurant,” she said. Her Facebook friends weren’t as forgiving: “No electronics at any table,” said one. And: “Our daughters play on their Kindles when they need to be occupied. A restaurant is not one of those times.” Huckleberries’ll make this simple: Get ear plugs for the kids. Or get out. Others aren’t paying good money to be irritated by tech-addicted minors.
Huckleberries
• Poet’s Corner: Expect hot air/to blow our way/from now until/Election Day — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Extended Forecast”).
• Cis Gors of Kootenai (Bonner County) has spent a lifetime watching her language. And she’s horrified that cuss words are slipping out as perilous times continue. She knows the old saying that one swears when s/he isn’t intelligent enough to find the proper word. But Cis also understands that, sometimes, the right word is a swear word.
• Only in Idaho: That balding guy crossing the Hayden Walmart parking lot last Friday made a fashion statement of some sort, with his black knee boots and a camouflage kilt. Camouflage, of course, is always in style here. But kilts? Not so much. But he sure looked comfortable.
• At the Conoco near Hauser on Highway 53, Dan and Caitland Minghelli, formerly of Coeur d’Alene, spotted a sticker of President Biden pasted on a pump pointing to the high-price/gallons screen. The punch line at the bottom of the Biden sticker? “I did that!”
• Daniella Cross wanted to let her inner child go Sunday when she stopped at Neider and Government Way behind a truck billowing soap bubbles. Instead, she filmed it with her cellphone. It had made her week. Now, she regrets not tailing the “absolutely amazing Bubble Truck” from Washington state. Occasionally, our adult selves get in the way of fun.
Parting Shot
A happy, rambunctious 3-year-old caught Chad Schobert’s attention at Evans Brothers Coffee in Sandpoint recently. When her mother picked her up to leave, the tyke waved with relish to Chad and other customers and yelled: “Bye, Dum Dum!” Her mortified mother ordered the child to stop, which, of course, prompted Babe in Arms to laugh and yell louder. Chad reports that everyone snickered after the pre-schooler’s roasting. Basically, she’s an innocent, unlike too many adults on social media who call one another names worse than “Dum Dum.”
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D.F. Oliveria can be contacted at dfo@cdapress.com.
