We weren’t interested in selling, but an insistent developer wanted to buy an easement from us and scheduled a meeting in our office to discuss his proposal. His younger assistant arrived on time and, waiting in our conference room, reported every so often that he’d just spoken with his boss and he’d be there soon.
The boss arrived an hour late, sweaty and pale, but looking prosperous with a houndstooth sport coat and a paisley ascot. As the assistant introduced him, the boss extended his hand and said "Sorry I'm late, someone killed my wife last night" and while still shaking my hand, drew his left forefinger across his throat.
He waved off any concerns I had and wouldn’t permit the meeting to be rescheduled. “This is important business” he said, but before getting to the business, recounted each ghastly detail about his wife’s murder.
Despite being “beside himself” - and despite our strong suggestions - he wouldn’t leave and went on to outline his proposed terms for the land purchase.
He was later arrested, but due to his relentlessness, the deal went through.
Relentlessness in the face of opposition is required to close any real estate deal, including one of the largest land acquisitions in history:
The largest federally-managed wilderness in the lower 48 is the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness Area. It is big—2.367 million contiguous acres big. Bigger than Yellowstone National Park big. Bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined big. The River of No Return part of the name describes the Salmon River as a one-way only trip. It’s a powerful river running, undammed, through a gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon.
The Frank Church part of the name references a boy wonder orator elected United States senator at the age of 32. Senator Church was a wily political operator that survived as a liberal Democrat in the conservative West because he was an old school populist who didn’t buy in to eastern intellectuals’ pontification.
He called bullshit often. He was early and loud when he called bullshit on the Vietnam War, demanding release of the POWs when others stood looking at the carpet and wringing their hands. He called bullshit on the CIA when he found the CIA was (not unlike our current tech overlords) secretly opening the mail of private citizens, listening to their phone calls, and collaborating with the media to monitor individuals. Here’s what he had to say about all of this:
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology… I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss.
Senator Church took a bigger stand with conservation. He was the floor sponsor of the Wilderness Act of 1964. In 1968 he sponsored the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. In 1972 he sponsored the Sawtooth National Recreation Area Bill.
But it was in August 1978, when with wile and guile, Senator Church hosted President Jimmy Carter, his family, and then Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus, on a 3-day float on the Middle Fork of the Salmon river. As intended, his guests later supported Church’s 1980 Central Idaho Wilderness Act. In 1984, in response to Church’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, the Senate renamed the Central Idaho Wilderness the Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness Area.
Twenty years of relentlessness, but Frank closed one of the biggest land deals in American history.
If you ever find yourself in Central Idaho, thank Frank. Thank Frank for the dark skies, the clean rivers, and the quiet. Frank stood up and pounded his fist on the table when he could’ve taken an easier road. Frank was a closer, and through force of will created a place of refuge, the other side of the coin for us urban developers. His work makes our cities even more special, and for this, we should all thank Frank.
The great purpose is to set aside a reasonable part of the vanishing wilderness, to make certain that generations of Americans yet unborn will know what it is to experience life on undeveloped, unoccupied land in the same form and character as the Creator fashioned it... It is a great spiritual experience. I never knew a man who took a bedroll into an Idaho mountainside and slept there under a star-studded summer sky who felt self-important that next morning. Unless we preserve some opportunity for future generations to have the same experience, we shall have dishonored our trust.
- Frank Church
what a quote from Frank Church, thanks for sharing.