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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC. This week's shows can be a little bit different. I am re airing a portion of an interview I did on KMUD on the KMUD Environment Show with friends and family of Petey Brucker. And who is Petey Brucker? Well, Petey was a good friend to EPIC, good friend to the environment, a stalwart of the Salmon River community and he passed away in April and we want to honor his incredible life and his legacy. He's the founder of the Klamath Forest Alliance Salmon River Restoration Council. He's pulled countless weeds from the banks of the Klamath and Salmon Rivers. And so it is right and appropriate when someone like this passes that we take time to honor them and that we also take time to learn from their example so we can all become better.

TOM WHEELER:

We're going to honor the legacy of Petey Brucker, who left us in April, and we're going to talk to some of his friends and family about the large legacy that he leaves out on the Salmon River on the Klamath in the North coast. It's a gorgeous obituary and it reminded me of, of all things Aristotle and, and I will get to a point eventually, I swear.

So Aristotle developed a form of ethics called Nicomachean ethics or virtue ethics, which were about his son, Nicomacheus, and he created a system of ethics to, to figure out how he wanted his son to be raised, what sort of a person he wanted to become. And it is focused on the virtues that we have as humans and trying to develop better virtues. And one thing in virtue ethics that that can be useful is to have these examples of people who've led virtuous, good lives. And Petey is one of those people for me and will be, I think, a touchstone for my life as somebody to try to emulate my behavior, my life, my virtues after. So again, it's a beautiful obituary, check it out. And we have friends and loved ones who are here to talk about Petey, talk about the legacy that he left, what they've, what, what Petey meant to them and how he's going to continue to live on both in the work, in restoring the Salmon River, restoring the Klamath and in themselves. So Allegra Brucker, Petey's daughter is joining the show.

ALLEGRA BRUCKER:

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

WHEELER:

We also have Larry Glass of the North Coast Environmental Center and SAFE. Welcome, Larry.

LARRY GLASS:

Hey, it's an honor to be here.

WHEELER:

And Nat Pennington should join the show at some point to another friend from up river. So gosh, where, where do you even start with Petey? So I, I understand that Petey was able to watch the drawdown of Copco Dam this winter and like, where you were, you were with him. Can you talk about, can you talk about that as kind of the, the, the capstone to a really wonderful life being able to, to see the dams that he's worked on trying to get out for many, many years actually start to come out.

BRUCKER:

Yeah, so it was a remarkable, monumental, and just so happy that the dams really did come out before Petey passed away. You know, in these past few years, as it's been getting closer to this moment, it was just, I was just saying, you know, I just really hope that Petey gets to see this. And sure enough, he did. And it was an amazing moment. And we were able to be at that Copco, that final Copco drawdown with Leif Hillman, Molly White, Myers, Frankie Myers, a bunch of these, Craig Tucker, Mike Belichick, a whole lot of really important people to that whole process. And, and I don't know if people know, but Petey had an interesting role in the negotiations for getting the Klamath dams out, in that he was actually never officially on the task force, but he went to every single meeting. And he had this way in which he could bring people together. And that there was times when the negotiations really fell apart. And whether it was in the bar after the meeting, or it was bringing his guitar and starting these high tension, high level meetings with a song. And of course, then he, he wrote his, his famous now song, which he did a wonderful rendition with the Interfaith Gospel Choir in Arcata, which was about take down the Iron Gate. And he was, it was kind of the anthem of the movement, but it really was just really true to Petey's nature of being able to build bridges and bring people together and level with anyone. And, and he was able to, yeah, just be at that moment and watching that water come down the river. We were, we had him on the bridge, there was a couple groups, one group went up around the corner a little ways. And Petey, Ron Reed, my mother, Gaba Greenberg, Leif Hillman, Sammy Genshaw, we were all there together on the bridge. And it was just so powerful to see that water coming. And he shed tears. It was a really monumental moment.

WHEELER:

Very cool. And Craig Tucker right now is up at the Iron Gate watching that get slowly or not even very slowly. It's, it's remarkable how much is gone already in just a couple of days of work. So folks from around the community are saying their love to you and to your family tonight, Allegra. Larry, I saw you nodding pretty hard with Allegra talking about how Pete was able to diffuse situations and bring, bring people together in hard moments. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

GLASS:

Yeah, I mean, so we got to go in the way back machine, way back to like the late 70s, when we were all living in terror of the Forest Service spraying Agent Orange on all of us. And it was a time when the rednecks in the community and the Forest Service really didn't like all of us hippies being around in the back country. And we were not treated very well in those days, and especially when we started getting organized. And my experience with the Forest Service in particular, I thought they were the emissaries of Satan, as far as I was concerned. They, in those days in the Chastity, the Forest Service was armed, and they didn't think anything about intimidating anybody they ran into. And there was, they used a lot of crazy tactics back then. But Petey had this interesting way of dealing with the great Satan, as I call them. He felt like they needed to be educated. They're, they're people just like the rest of us. And I remember, I was so angry back then, because of all the friends I'd had, who'd been sprayed and been made sick. And, and, but I heard, he broke through to me. It's, I think, I think, I don't know, I think we were sitting at Black Bear or something, and he had his guitar, and he was playing some song he had just written. And then we, just the two of us talked for a little while. And, and he really got me to let go of all of that anger I had, and see that these were just other people we didn't agree with, and we needed to show them a different way. And, and so we were forming at that time a coalition of groups. SAFE had just recently formed in Trinity County. We had the NEC going at the time, had been going for a little bit longer, like seven or eight years or something. And we decided to form this coalition of anti-spray groups. And we started out with just Salmon River folks, and SAFE, and, and, and a few other groups, Klamath Forest Alliance, and I can't remember some of those groups have long gone since, in those days. But we formed this coalition called California's for Alternatives to Pesticides, CCAP. And we patterned it after a group that already existed in Oregon called NCAP. And they were being very effective in Region 6. We wanted to bring that to Region 5. So Petey was instrumental in working on getting all these far-flung little watershed groups together. Eventually we organized 50 different watershed groups from all over California, mostly in Northern California. We even had some in the Southern Sierras, part of our coalition. And once again, it was Petey's ability to be able to work with everybody and bring everybody together to talk, because even, even all the different spray groups didn't agree about how to deal with, you know, what was, we were all being threatened with. But he just had this way of cutting through all of the dissension and getting to the, the heart of the matter that we were all together in the, in the struggle to stop these poisons from being dumped in our watersheds. And I remember being out in the field with him, where they were doing experimental plots up there by Forks of the Salmon, where they were hand-clearing the brush that the Forest Service hated so much in the plantations. And, you know, they got out there and did the work. I mean, he got volunteers in the community and they did hard work. It's called grubbing and it was hard work, man, and hot sun out there digging around those trees. And they weren't getting paid, but it was to make the point. And he did make the point. I mean, he did, he won over people. I remember him introducing me to some truck drivers that he'd won over and, you know, he got them to see that they drank from the same water that we were all drinking from. And, you know, anyways, that, that's my fond memories of Petey is getting me to see the best in my adversaries and realizing that we could work together. We just had to bring some sort of common understanding.

WHEELER:

I love that. I love that. So something else that you brought up is how Petey would do the work, right? It's easy to be opposed to something, but Petey was more than that, right? He, he was concerned about pesticide application. And so he provided the alternative and a liquor. Maybe you could talk about some of the work in, in pulling brush and doing not weed removal and all, all of these things. I imagine that as a child, you were probably dragged into a lot of manual labor that you probably weren't very fond of, but now maybe you can look back and, and, and, and enjoy it. Maybe hopefully.

BRUCKER:

I guess, I don't know. It never bothered me that much. I think it was just what we did. The knapweed project was a couple decades later in the 90s and that was ended up being the amount of volunteer. So the Forest Service discovered this plant spotted knapweed on the Salmon River bars and they said, well, we're going to spray Roundup on them. And he said, what? Like we stopped this years ago. We are not spraying Roundup here. And so he made this project, which is like one of the most successful noxious weed removal projects ever in the country. And he just worked tirelessly and developed the tools for the job. And yeah, I mean, that is such a remarkable thing about Petey is that he was just this tremendously brilliant person who could bring people together and talk about things and had all these ideas. But he was also such a doer. He would, yeah, he was just right. And a doer. And he was able to bring the workforce together to do the work. He volunteered thousands of hours on those noxious weed project, but he also got thousands of people involved in it too. So it really is. Yeah. I mean, as a kid, I think the hardest thing probably was not the doing stuff, but more the, that Petey was on the road a lot for meetings and that there was a level that was tiring and that war on the family. But Petey always maintained, really always maintained his spirit of love and his deep connection and his just his presence in our life. It wasn't like he was so obsessively driven by it that he was not present because of it. And this like, it's jumping ahead a little bit, but it makes me think ties in here that Petey, as he was dying, so Petey had a disease called neurological degenerative disease called progressive supernuclear palsy. And it took his balance and coordination and his speech and swallow were impacted greatly by it. And in the last many months, he was pretty much mute. He had very little communication and, but he was so, he was just still such a loving presence and he remained on the board of the restoration council until the day he died. He was present in a meeting, a board meeting a few weeks before he died. And he was, he could do two fingers for yes, one finger for no. And he was seconding motions. And, but what I really wanted to say was that he, I would say to him anytime saying goodnight, whatever it was, I love you, Petey. And he would say the last words that he would mouth to me was, I love you too. And that was really the last thing that he ever was able to say to me. But until the very end, that was what he was still very focused on being able to say.

WHEELER:

Oh, that that's really nice.

WHEELER:

For the EcoNews, we are talking about Petey Brucker, a longtime stalwart of the Salmon River community, on this week's episode.

WHEELER:

So among the kind of doing the work to continue on that theme, Petey not only founded the Salmon River Restoration Council, he also founded Klamath Forest Alliance. He was the person to get a lot of things started. And that's something impressive to me. Larry, I imagine that through KFA, you interacted with Petey in forest defense projects. Can you talk maybe a little bit about trying to protect this special place that we've all adopted?

GLASS:

Yeah, I mean, and he was tireless about it. And he wasn't, as Allegra said, he wasn't the guy who said, yeah, let's do this big blockade here. Let's blockade this road and then leave. Let everybody else. No, he was right at the forefront of whatever action we had. And sometimes they got tense. I can remember loggers showing up for work. And we were all there blocking their way. And yeah, I mean, once again, I had learned to follow his lead at that point. Instead of just getting right out there and getting in somebody else's face, I just waited for Petey to step forward like I knew he would. And he would start talking to these guys. And he had a way of relating to them that, I guess I can do it now, but there was no way I could do it back then. But he could do it. And he would de-escalate the situation. Like, I thought one time, I remember these guys, big old pier-built truck. I thought they were just going to plow right through us on the roadway. And he talked to them. And we wound up all drinking beer alongside the road. And yeah, and of course, Petey had to get out his guitar and play some tune that he'd written about driving trucks or something. I don't even remember the gist of it. But he always had, it seemed like he always had a song for whatever occasion came up.

WHEELER:

Yeah, let's talk about music as part of his life, because he was in a number of bands. Larry, as he said, he brought his guitar to things, would use that as a way to diffuse situations. Allegra, can you talk about the role of music and what it brought to Petey and what Petey brought to the world through his music?

BRUCKER:

Well, in a lot of ways, I think music was Petey's expression of his spirituality, really. And he also used it to bring people together and to and to communicate really deep messages. He often wrote songs for people who had passed on. He wrote songs about the things that were important to him. And he played. So this summer in next month, in June 22nd, we're having his memorial in Forks of Salmon at the community center. And we were driving by the community center the day that he died and just thinking about how many musical events, how many community meetings, how many things that he had organized or participated in at that place. And every dance holiday, Petey played in rock and roll bands. He also played his acoustic music. He just music was a huge part of him. And I think for me, it inspired me as an artist that the importance of my own artistic expression, despite whatever else my passions or my work is. And yeah, he just really that was just another one of his tools, really, but also not just a tool. It was clearly an art form and an expression of his his heart. But yeah, he and also in the music he was able that was part of the bridge is that like those dances in Forks of Salmon, it wasn't just the hippies coming to the dances. It was everyone coming together and that especially playing those classic rock and roll tunes. And and then in the later years, he played with the Salmon River Stipers, which were the McBroom family's band. And it's just yeah, he was that was another way in which he was able to cross over many, many bridges and lines. And on that, what you're saying about being at the road blockade or something, a lot of times he might know the truck driver. And, you know, like, hey, man, and so they were able to break things down. And so I know I wrote about in the obituary, but so in Forks of Salmon, there's the beer tree, which was the across the street from the general store. And it was kind of the community meeting place. And Petey would say that it was rude to to drive past the beer tree if there was anyone there and not stop and talk to people. And then that was networking. That was how we stay connected as a community. He also thought it was rude to he had this great routine. And I wish I don't know if it's recorded anywhere, but sort of about the evolution of the Salmon River and how in the 60s, like going driving, just even taking a drive was was rare. I guess it was 70s. He moved there in the early 70s, but it was it was like real slow. And if you met anyone on the road, you might end up going to their house and spending a few days with them. And then, you know, in the 80s, it was like you'd stop and you'd have like lunch or you'd have a beer with them. And then in the 90s, it was getting faster and faster. And you might just wave at them. And like by the 2000s, you weren't even waving at them anymore. And so it was this interesting progression of our culture and just that Petey had this very much sense of you got to keep talking to people. You have to stay connected. Like you can't think that you're too important to stop and slow down and just talk to whoever it is that you're passing by.

GLASS:

He thought everybody was family. Everybody was family to him. You cracked me up because I remember back then he said, yeah, I play two kinds of music. I play music for the cause and I play butt shaking music.

WHEELER:

I like that. So, so Epic, my organization was able to honor him this summer with our Lifetime Achievement Award. And something that was very special about that ceremony was that we had Leif Hillman, Ron Reed. We had a lot of friends from the Crook tribe, from the Yurok tribe come and talk about Petey and in a really reverent way, he was able to adopt this place and then was kind of adopted by the people of that place too. Can you talk about what, what it was about Petey, this, this white guy from New York who was able to come across the country and find friends with the indigenous people of this area, move into this spot and, and become part of Salmon River, how, how was he able to, to make that happen? Like.

GLASS:

showed everyone respect, and I know indigenous people respond to that really well.

BRUCKER:

I think also, Petey realized that these people have so much more knowledge than we any of us could ever imagine about this place. And like you said, he was able to give a level of respect that really helped raise a lot of people's voices up and get have, like Ron Reed speaks very highly of him, just being able to help sort of lift him out of the mud. And yeah, and I think I mean, Petey never thought that he was better than anyone else. Like really, and that's how he lived his life. And he never thought that, as a matter of fact, he thought that everyone else's story was very important. And I think that that's part of how he did that. And also just, and he also was such a generous person. He would give people anything that he could. And some friends talk about just when they were in such a tough spot, he helped just help them out with what they needed and just how much respect. And I think it's interesting because I think in a lot of Indigenous cultures too, there's so much about trading and gifting. And I just think that that was a piece that Petey came very naturally to him. So he was always willing to give whatever it was that someone might need or that he might have. So I think that that's a piece of it. And also I think that just the way that he understood the rivers and the fish and really what was going on, the way that he really took the time to figure that out. I think that that was another big piece of it.

GLASS:

Well, anytime I would see him, and it would be infrequent because we lived 150 miles away from each other, but I'd run into him again at a meeting. And every time I did, it was always a giant bear hug from Petey. Every time, he always was so glad to see it.

WHEELER:

So I started this by talking about virtues and trying to hold him up as somebody with virtues to emulate. We've talked a lot about the kindness, the respect, that you need to prove it in some sense. You need to do the work yourself. No one else is going to do it for you sort of a thing. What are you going to take with you from his life? What have you grabbed from him that is going to live in you moving forward, Allegra? What are the kind of lasting characteristics of Petey that you have or that you maybe even still want to develop better? Well, I

BRUCKER:

I mean, I think that that bridge building, that real deep sense of community is both something that I have and something that I'm also cultivating. Also to be said, Petey was just, was such a remarkable father to me. And I try to emulate that level of respect and just gentleness and kindness that he expressed to me as I'm raising my own children. And I think that's a big piece of it for me.

WHEELER:

Larry, how about you?

GLASS:

I mean, I think about Petey frequently as I'm working with the Trinity Collaborative and realize that that would be exactly what Petey was doing if he lived in my neck of the woods. And I think about that all the time, especially when I'm working with the industry people.

WHEELER:

Yeah, totally. Nat Pennington has been able to join us for just the last little bit of our tribute to Petey. Nat, we're talking about the things that we learned from Petey, the things that we're going to carry with us that, that will cause him to, to, to, to continue to live on in this world, what is it that you are going to carry with you that you learned from Petey Brucker?

NAT PENNINGTON:

Well, thank you for having me, Tom. Gosh, the one thing that always stood out, it was in and around his work with Noxious Weeds and the No Spray herbicides campaign, and it was crazy. We were fighting, oftentimes, the Forest Service and the Department of Ag and the folks that wanted to spray, and the way that we would get out ahead of it, the spraying, that is, is just go and pick the weeds, so there were none to spray. Then eventually, there was grants that we had gotten, and collaboratively, as the Restoration Council, we started doing more and more collaboration with those entities that didn't really believe that it was possible to do it without herbicides at first, and then Petey would get asked to do a presentation on the program that he had put together, and he said, I get up there, and it's obvious, I'm doing the presentation, so it's obvious that we're behind this movement, but the first thing he would do is thank all of these detractors that were initially, I don't want to say enemies, but people that we had to fight against to keep herbicides from getting sprayed in these pristine watersheds, and he would jump up there, and he would say, I really just want to thank the U.S. Forest Service, I want to thank these individuals that were working for agencies at the time, I won't mention any names, but it was just the irony of that, but the brilliance, I mean, I don't even want to say brilliance, it was just his heart was like that, and even though they were, at one time, maybe adversarial, it was like, bring them in, and that was kind of something that just really, he told me that, he said, you just thank them, no matter what, whether they were taking away or adding to, because eventually they'll get some kudos from the forest supervisor for getting thanked for being a part of this really progressive program that you've created, so that's my piece, and I appreciate your time in this, Tom, and bringing it to the listenership.

WHEELER:

Yeah. And thank you for, for jumping in at the last moment here, Nat. I really appreciate that. I think we could go for a whole hour just talking about Petey, but maybe everyone out there can do some things to remember him. So we, we have bear hugs. We have booty shaking music. We have go and do the work, pull some noxious weeds, do those things in remembrance of Petey and you'll live a happier, better life and you'll leave the world a better place. So thank you, Nat. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Allegra. This was a wonderful tribute to, to our friend. All right.

WHEELER:

Well, I hope that everyone enjoyed learning about Petey, hearing from his friends and family. I really enjoyed talking to these folks. We'll be back next week with more environmental news from the north coast of California. Have a good one.