REMEMBERING EARL COOLEY

Hundreds of mourners remember smokejumper Cooley's life, pioneering legacy

By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian | Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009 10:50 pm

Not everyone who paid final respects to Earl Cooley on Monday knew the man.

Some, if not most, came to the Sunset Memorial Funeral Home west of Missoula because of the legends and the legacy Cooley left behind when he died Nov. 9 at age 98.

“I’m just a jumper,” shrugged Court Wallace, who sat in a back wing at a memorial service that drew some 300 people.

Wallace and most other current smokejumpers know Cooley through the stories that have been passed down, of his work in the early years of the Forest Service smokejumping era and his part in the first jump onto a wildfire in Idaho in 1940.

They had met the ailing Cooley only when he presented them their freshman class jump pins and certificates. Even as his health deteriorated, Cooley took pride in the task every summer up to and including the past one, said Ed Ward, superintendent of the Missoula smokejumper base.

Wallace had a ball cap on his lap that read “Nez Perce Forest,” the forest where Rufus Robinson of Kooskia, Idaho, and Cooley, who grew up in Corvallis, made their jump into history and lore 69 summers ago.

Though he now jumps out of Missoula, Wallace worked on the Nez Perce for several years, he said. In September 2005, he and some fellow jumpers took time out of a cabin protection project in the Selway-Bitterroot to hike some 15 miles to the Marten Creek site where Cooley and Robinson first jumped.

With the help of a GPS locator and a Forest Service map, they found it – and Wallace still shakes his head. Cooley always said it was remote. Wallace said it’s still at least two miles from the nearest trail.

“It’s funny, we were hoping to find a big meadow,” he said.

Instead they found a spot “way down in this gnarly canyon that’s solid spruce,” he said.

On that windy July day in 1940, first the strings of Cooley’s chute tangled and then he landed in one of those spruces. He made it down safely to join Robinson in containing the blaze.

He made 16 more jumps that first summer and 48 in the next nine years. But that first was the closest call he ever had, Cooley said in a 2005 Public Broadcasting System interview played in the funeral home.

Other “chuters” found trouble sleeping, but never Cooley.

“Oh yeah, hell, I enjoyed jumping,” he said in the interview, eliciting a chuckle from Monday’s mourners.

Cooley’s impact on smokejumping and firefighting was felt around the West – and honored around the nation. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times were among the national publications that carried byline stories of his life and death in the past week.

“We make a lot out of his first jump, but he did a lot of other things for smokejumping,” pointed out Jon McBride of Missoula, a retired jumper.

Cooley was at the forefront in the development of firefighting tools and technology. Among his contributions was testing and then improving the old Eagle parachute with which he made his first jumps, and which McBride said would “open with a bang and just about knock the wind out of you.”

From his home in Missoula, McBride coordinates the Art Jukkila Trails Maintenance Program for the National Smokejumper Association, an organization Cooley founded.

Indeed, Cooley’s history is directly linked with that of smokejumping. He was the spotter in the airplane on jumping’s darkest day, at the Mann Gulch fire north of Helena in 1949 that claimed 13 lives.

When he got too old to jump, he was a Forest Service district ranger on the Nez Perce and at Noxon. He returned to Missoula in 1958 and spent the last 13 years of his Forest Service career running the smokejumper base.

He and Irene, his wife of more than 70 years, raised five daughters who survive him along with their husbands, 12 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Cooley’s remains were buried at the Corvallis Cemetery on Monday afternoon.

Back in Missoula, Cathy Scribner, a chaplain for Hospice of Missoula, eulogized Cooley and spoke of his wit, his courage and passion, his inner strength and his iron grip. She noted what she called his “heroic status among smokejumpers around the world.”

“He found his church in the mountains and the wild blue sky,” she said.

Court Wallace recalled another day, this one in 2004, his first year as a smokejumper. His crew was en route to a fire above the Selway-Bitterroot when at one point over a nondescript stretch of rugged country, the spotter threw a streamer from the plane. It wasn’t until later that Wallace understood why.

The date was July 12, the anniversary of that first jump, and the streamers commemorated the otherwise unmarked site where Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley launched the smokejumping era.

“He’s really the father of smokejumping, is how we look at it,” said Ward. “He has been an inspiration to all of us, and we’ll miss his laughter, and all the fun we’ve had with him.

“Our job now is just to continue on and work hard like Earl taught us to, and keep the tradition going for another 69 years.”

Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.