Wilbur Vernon WILES

WILES, THRALL, SCHULDT, ROUNDS, RIPPEL, HORNOCKER

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 2/10/2024 at 13:06:54

January 19, 1916 --- April 17, 2019

Wilbur Vernon Wiles died peacefully at the Veterans Administration's Willow Hospice in Boise, Idaho on April 17, 2019. He was 103. He was predeceased by his wife, Katie Thrall Wiles; his parents, Roscoe and Flora Schuldt Wiles; his sister, Eunice Wiles Rounds; and his brothers, Oliver Wiles and Billy Wiles. He is survived by his sister, Geraldine Wiles Rippel of Des Moines, Iowa, and by several nieces and nephews.

Wilbur was born in Goodell, Iowa on January 19, 1916, the second of five children. He grew up on the farm homesteaded by his grandfather, Roscoe Sr. Wilbur hiked the woods, trapped and hunted, and dreamed of the West. As Wilbur was beginning high school in 1931, way out in Idaho the Forest Service was in the process of placing special protections on a vast and wild landscape of canyons and forests, rivers, mountains and high basins, designating it the Idaho Primitive Area. Young Wilbur Wiles did not know it then, of course, but this area would become his home for 80 years.

By the time he graduated from Goodell High School in 1934, Wilbur had made enough from selling mink and muskrat pelts to buy a Model T Ford, in which he immediately lit out for the West. For the next few years Wilbur worked construction and logging jobs in Wyoming, Idaho, and other parts of the Northwest, exploring as far as Alaska and Mexico.

In 1938 he discovered the tiny settlement of Big Creek, Idaho, consisting mainly of a ranger station and a rustic hunting lodge on the western edge of the Primitive Area, about 20 miles and a high mountain pass east of Yellow Pine. He moved into an abandoned miner's cabin on lower Monumental Creek, a place even deeper inside that wilderness. Later he built a cabin in the area adjacent to Big Creek known as Edwardsburg. He obtained a pack horse and hounds, and established trap lines covering at least 120 miles in several directions. He became proficient in mining and prospecting, and worked at the Snowshoe Mine, Stibnite, and a tungsten mine he developed on Elk Creek Summit. And he hunted cougars, for which, at the time, the state paid a handsome bounty.

When he was in his 60s, he discovered and later patented a small opal mine that still exists in the upper Monumental Creek drainage. In the spring of 1941 Wilbur snowshoed over Profile Summit to Yellow Pine, caught the mail car to Cascade, and volunteered for the United States Army. Eight months later, he found himself in the wartime Army, which is what he anticipated and why he enlisted in the first place. After a couple of years as an instructor on the small arms firing range, he was sent to England to prepare for the epic invasion of Europe. Wilbur went ashore on Omaha Beach on June 9, 1944. Attaining the rank of sergeant, he participated in the breakout near St. Lo, endured the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, and fought through to the Elbe River where Soviet and American forces linked up in April 1945. He helped liberate two concentration camps. In his later years, incredulous to learn about the existence of Holocaust deniers, he said, "Well, they don't know what they're talking about. I know the Holocaust happened because I saw it. I saw what the Nazis did." The Army awarded Wilbur Wiles the Bronze Star for bravery.

Honorably discharged in October 1945, he made straight for Big Creek. In the summer of 1964, Wilbur opened his cabin door to the knock of Maurice Hornocker, who also was raised in Iowa and had roamed those Iowa hills, but had come west to study under John Craighead at the University of Montana. After twelve years in Montana, Hornocker was pursuing his PhD in wildlife biology at the University of British Columbia. He doubtless captured Wilbur's interest that summer day when he described the audacious doctoral project he had devised: tracking and marking cougars in the Idaho Primitive Area to determine their population densities, territories and interactions with their prey base. Hornocker had no experience capturing cougars, and little with the extended periods of self-supported back country travel that would be required in such rugged country, much of it in winter. He didn't know the territory. His inquiries about who he could hire to track, tranquilize, collar, measure, and release the big cats led him directly to Wilbur Wiles. Their ten-year effort together pioneered new techniques and understandings in wildlife management; it resulted in a PhD dissertation and several scientific papers, a 1969 National Geographic story, and a career for Dr. Hornocker as a world-renowned expert on large predators.

And Maurice and Wilbur became best friends for life, a fact probably more significant to them than the scientific discoveries they made. Dr. Hornocker refers to Wilbur as his mentor, and credits him with the success of the cat study. Maurice, now 88, was at Wilbur's side the day he died.

Later in life, Wilbur married Kathryn Thrall, a widow with her own back country roots. Wilbur was devoted to Katie, and acceded to her need to spend winters someplace with milder winters than Big Creek. For a number of years in the 80s and 90s they lived part-time in Boise and later in Arizona. Wilbur continued to keep a fifth-wheel trailer in Arizona after Katie died in 1997, and drove himself from Big Creek to Arizona every October, back north again in May, until he was 101. He never looked as old as his age in years, always staying fit, walking the mountains and working his Big Creek garden. Young friends witnessed him, at 85, walking 26 miles in one day on the Big Creek trail. And this despite the fact that, eleven months before, he had broken both ankles-and had been hospitalized for the first time in his life-due to a fall from his cabin roof.

The photo here is Wilbur at 95. Wilbur Wiles was a straightforward and quiet man of natural-born integrity. Although he is the subject of a Forest Service biography and has been featured on Idaho Public Television's "Outdoor Idaho" and Boise's KTVB News, he never sought any kind of notoriety. He never was a big talker about anything. He seemed surprised when asked how he wanted to be remembered, saying simply, "Why, just as I am!"

A celebration of Wilbur's life is being planned for late summer 2019 at his cabin in Big Creek, the date to be announced. Wilbur's friends thank the staff at the Veterans Administration's Willow Hospice in Boise for the outstanding, truly excellent care they gave Wilbur in his final months. Donations in Wilbur's memory can be made to Idaho Public Television, 1455 N. Orchard St. Boise, ID 83706.

Idaho Press-Tribune --- Nampa, Idaho
April 21, 2019