September 15 will mark 40 years since a pipe bomb exploded in Bill Wassmuth’s home in Coeur d’Alene. Wassmuth was, at the time, a Catholic priest and head of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. That was the organization that provided resistance to the Aryan Nations Church based in nearby Hayden Lake. Members of that organization were later convicted for the bombing.
That incident thrust Wassmuth into the public spotlight. He became nationally-known for his human rights work. He eventually left the priesthood, married and moved to Ellensburg. He continued his work there until he passed away in 2002 from ALS. In 2014, the Idaho Human Rights Education Center changed its name to the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights. Its executive director is Christina Bruce-Bennion.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Christina Bruce-Bennion: I never had a chance to meet Father Bill, but I've met several family members now. He was someone who loved to talk and he had a gift and he believed very strongly that what the Aryan Nations stood for is not what that community or Idaho, in general, should be known for. And so the louder they got, the louder he got along with the coalition and eventually they even bombed his home and, or the rectory where he was living, I guess, connected to the church there and he survived it.
He coined the phrase that we can't just be against something, we have to be for something. So just say yes to human rights. That was his thing.
One of the things I love so much about the way that Bill Wassmuth and the coalition up there really, they were just creative and that idea of being for something rather than just against something, I think has really been a thread through the work of our organization in our educational programs.
Father Bill passed away in 2002 and then a few years later, the organization here was at a moment of inflection and everything and so the board asked them permission if it was all right to add his name. That's when the center took on Bill Wassmuth's name.
DN: Christina Bruce-Bennion says Idaho has, in some ways, evolved since Wassmuth passed nearly a quarter century ago. In other ways, it hasn’t changed.
CBB: There's been a tremendous influx of people moving to Idaho. We're seeing it here in the Treasure Valley as well and eastern Idaho and even in very rural areas and so I think there's that change to a lot of folks coming in for lots of different reasons. So I think there's kind of that, just that overall change.
I think what has not changed is that, even in the face of the politics of our state, which have in recent years definitely moved into a much, much further to the right. I think even for a lot of people who would identify themselves as longtime Idaho conservative Republicans, they are in many cases also not supportive of what we're seeing politically in our state and I would say that what I think has not changed is that all around the state, there are people in large and small communities really working hard to counter some of that extremism. We see it in lots of forms. We have the opportunity to connect with and partner with folks across the state and there are just lots of really dedicated, creative people who don't want to see hate and that sort of fear and divisiveness really taking hold in their communities.
DN: Wassmuth is gone, but his widow, Mary Frances, still has some connection to the institution named after her husband.
CBB: I've actually had the opportunity to meet Mary Frances. She splits her time between northern Idaho, Coeur d'Alene actually, and spends the winters in a warmer climate. She's an artist and in our new building, we have several art pieces anyway and she did one of those art pieces for us and so I had the opportunity to meet her.
I think for Father Bill, and obviously I can't speak for him, but what I've heard from both Mary Frances and others who knew him is that, you know, I think as much as he loved his community and his congregation, he also did often feel like that he was lonely and not being able to have a partner. I think just as his life progressed some of the events and things, he realized that that was really something that was missing in his own life and so when he left the priesthood and went to move to Washington and continued his work actually there with the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, they really expanded the work that the coalition in northern Idaho had started.
And then, unfortunately, he was diagnosed with ALS and that was ultimately what led to his death. But, you know, even in his last few years, he was working with different writers and journalists to sort of tell this story. I think he deeply impacted the work and I think the work also, you know, deeply impacted him.
DN: Earlier this year, the Wassmuth Center celebrated 30 years of human rights work. It’s the home to Boise’s Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, which also has a 30-year history in Idaho’s capital city.
CBB: Where the connections were, were definitely with the sort of the original group of founders of our organization who are all from Boise and some of the folks who were initially very involved in this idea of a memorial here also were connected to the coalition and knew Father Bill, so the personal connection in terms of Marilyn Shuler, for example, who was just an incredible woman who lived here in Boise, but she was one of our first state level human rights commissioners kind of appointed by the governor. She just worked tirelessly through her role in education and with Boise State and the community down here and she was a part of the group that really helped to ultimately bankrupt the Aryan Nations, which is what closed them down. She definitely knew Father Bill and there were other folks.
So the personal connection was there from the beginning. The reasons for the memorial and our organization coming into being were certainly impacted by what was happening up north and it was also some of the other things that were happening in our community here, things like certain legislation that was being proposed back in the 1990s, similar to today. At the time it was Proposition 1, it was known as the anti-gay bill. That was narrowly defeated, but that was one thing.
The local leader of the NAACP had a rock thrown through their front window. There were just a lot of things that were just kind of connected in that landscape of just not wanting to be accepting of all people.
In 1995, there was a traveling exhibit called Anne Frank in the world that was touring the United States and Boise happened to be one of the stops on the tour, so to speak. When it came to Boise, over 40,000 people visited this exhibit, which was extraordinary for 1995, when you think of how much smaller Idaho was and no social media or whatever.
I think among many things, two of the things connected to Anne Frank's story that really resonated with the group that founded the center is one, just that despite the really dark times that Anne lived in, she still was able to have this desire to see the best in humanity and to try to still believe in the goodness of people.
The story, of course, from that era, one that has sadly been repeated in different ways over time is that when we discriminate against one group, it never stops there, right? What we know again and again and again is that when there is some kind of official discrimination against one group, it just doesn't stop there. And so there were a lot of really great sort of conversations and reflections and, of those 40 plus thousand visitors at that exhibit, over 15,000 of them were school kids and the students were asking great questions.
It was a group of women who decided, you know what, we need something in Boise that is not only a place to learn about history, but also to really be sort of inspired and rooted in this hope for how do we work to really create communities that center dignity and belonging for everyone, right? And so that was kind of this confluence of all these factors that were taking place in that time frame that led to the founding here.
