IN REMEMBERANCE & GRATITUDE

In his 82-year life, former Minnesota DNR Commissioner Rod Sando developed the mind of a research scientist.  The eye of a bird hunter.  The soul of a nature lover.   And the heart of a youthful smoke jumper (which he was for a fire season out West.)

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He was a complicated and colorful man, whose critics complained he was hard-headed.   I just thought he was damned smart and, well, confident.    The facts are Sando served the Minnesota  Department of Natural Resources  as its director of forestry and bureau of lands.  He became the DNR commissioner from 1991 to 1999. His imprint was trying to distribute resources according to eco systems rather than political boundaries and negotiating a settlement with the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewas over the harvest of walleyes. The legislature rejected the settlement which, in effect, was later validated by the courts.

 

Rod left Minnesota in 2000 to Boise, Idaho, as the director of the state’s Department of Fish and Game, and a couple of years later moved to Oregon as executive  director of The Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Authority. 

 

He brought with him his devotion to the science of fish management, his idea that nature is a legacy and his disdain for quick fixes and political shenanigans.  Common sense and a good heart led him to join DamTruth in the battle to remove the four dams on the lower Snake River.

 

It was on the Rogue in southern Oregon that my friend Don Shelby and I joined Sando a few years ago. We had no business cards, adoring fans or followers – just three old guys with a yen to fish, look, walk and talk.   

 

Officially, we went salmon fishing off the mouth of the Rogue River in southern Oregon. Unofficially,  Sando and Shelby launched a three-day, two-man symposium on climate change.  They discussed melting glaciers, rising oceans, raging wildfires, and alarming indifference; they brought facts, figures, studies and even talked of a “null hypothesis.”   

 

But for me, the real nugget of that trip was on our way back to Portland when we found an old fishing lodge along the Rogue where we could have lunch.   I recalled it with a short story from my book, The Home Stretch:

 

The waitress who served us lunch – cold fried chicken, hot biscuits, cole slaw and lemonade –spotted a tattoo on Shelby’s wrist.  An Army insignia? she asked.  No, he said, my wife’s name, but I was in the Air Force.  She said her son had been in the Marine Corps, serving two tours in Iraq as a chopper mechanic.  She was obviously proud of his service and subsequent college education.

 

But he came back changed, she said, and estranged from her.  She’d never seen her two grandchildren.  She started to cry as she recalled that, in her family tradition, the children always came to see the parents.  She apologized for the tears and we told her it was O.K.  We were no strangers to pain.

 

Sando gently told her perhaps she ought to initiate the visit.  Shelby allowed as how he thought she wasn’t part of the problem but could be part of the solution.  I gave her a hug.   We paid the bill, left a tip and, on the way out, Shelby left another twenty with the lodge owner to give to our waitress.

 

He said to tell her this was a down payment on a plane ticket to see her son.  She’d be happy to, she said, and then we asked her to take a picture of the three of us in front of her lodge. 

 

For 15 minutes as we rolled along the Rogue in the afternoon sun, we did not speak.  It was clear that what we paid for, and what we got, was a helluva lot more than lunch. 

 

Following Sando’s death, I got that feeling again. 

 

Editor’s Note:  Nimmer is a retired reporter living in St. Paul, Minn.