by StevenL 6/16/10
He simply opened the door, walked in as if this was his home, and loped into the kitchen where he served himself some cheap box-packaged wine. A big fellow, his long gray hair and grizzled beard gave him the appearance of a mountain man.
His hands and head were huge. His face wore an etched-in expression of someone who had taked a lot of crap without compromising in return. Was I looking at stubbornness or strength?
When he spoke the mellifluous and calm voice seemed incongruous with the image.
I had just met Dr. Grover Krantz, the nation’s number one academic Sasquatch scholar.
It was in the mid-1980s in Pullman. Geneva, Krantz’s retired secretary, had sort of a bargain basement salon in her kitchen/dining room. All sorts of characters made daily stops. No one knocked. A glass of gaggy box wine (“groppo”) was part of the ritual.
Grover came to mind recently when I submitted a relic to the Richard Hugo House ZAPP Gallery show concerning what the world calls “Bigfoot”. Back in the early 1980s I produced a five-issue run of “Sasquatch Comix”. Decades before ZAPP was given copies, I had sent a set to Grover. By coincidence I moved to Pullman shortly after that in order to take a job at WSU.
And now here was the man himself. He showed me some correspondence from Soviet academics who were more open-minded on the topic of Sasquatch than his American colleagues.
We talked about the “Jacko” case of July 1884. The was an incident where railroad workers near Yale, B.C., supposedly (according to a contemporary newspaper account) captured a young Sasquatch and kept it in captivity for a brief time. A man by the name of Tilbury allegedly took the creature away with the goal of exhibiting it in London.
Dr. Krantz told me he had tracked Tilbury to Duluth. At that point Jacko was sold to P. T. Barnum’s Circus. But it died in short order. 
According to Grover, the Sasquatch was possibly buried in the Barnum Cemetery. And here Dr. Krantz got a felonious gleam in his eyes as he said he was going to exhume that body “by hook or by crook.”
When it comes to the existence of Sasquatch, let’s just say I’m not closed to the idea. Interestingly, as our discussion came to locating hot spots in the Olympia area, we both agreed if you wanted to meet the mysterious man-ape the place to go was up the West Fork of Porter Creek in the Black Hills.
I don’t know why Grover came to this conclusion, but if I tell you my reasons you’ll think I’m nuts. What’s that you say? Too late for that? Most amusing.
Near Grover’s office on the WSU campus sat an amazing exhibit of plaster casts of alleged Sasquatch foot and hand prints. Dermal ridges were plainly visible on some of them. Dr. Krantz was said to have hair samples and bags of Sasquatch scat as well. Mrs. Krantz (he had just married his 4th wife when I met him) must have been a very patient and loving person.
I have met three people who claim to have encountered a Sasquatch – two of those being in the Fort Lewis/town of Rainier area. But my favorite story comes from Whatcom County, set in the 1960s.
The source was a man who belonged to the Lummi Tribe. Three young men (including himself) would set out a gillnet overnight and then pull it back in the morning. But sometimes they would arrive only to find the net already pulled back and part of their harvest taken. Someone was stealing the fish.
So one night they waited in ambush and were stunned to see an enormous creature single-handedly haul in a net it took all three of them to pull. The men shouted and chased the thing away. My friend said it outran them on two legs, grunting and leaving a foul odor.
Then the thought crossed their minds, “What the hell are we doing chasing a monster in the dark?” So they stopped. And the morning light revealed Big. Foot. Prints.
Back to Grover. He retired in 1998 and moved to Port Townsend where he died at age 70 on Valentine’s Day 2002. But his story doesn’t end there.
According to his wishes, Grover’s body was donated to the “Cadaver Farm” in Tennessee. This is a place where corpse decay is studied under various conditions. After a short stint in this serene and pastoral setting Dr. Krantz’s bones were donated to the Smithsonian…
…along with the bones of his three dogs. Grover wanted it that way.
The bones of Grover and his Irish Wolfhound, Clyde, are now on display in the Smithsonian’s “Written in Bone” exhibit. The are posed so it would appear Clyde is jumping up to lick Grover’s face.
Even in death Dr. Krantz remains an educator.
Alas, good Grover. I met him, Horatio. Where be your gibes now? Next time I’m in D. C. I need to pay Dr. Krantz a visit and contemplate a mystery even greater than that of the Sasquatch.