Memorial dedicated to martyr Bruce Klunder

Bruce Klunder, a pastor and Baker City native who gave his life in the civil rights struggle in 1964 at age 27, may be better known outside his hometown.

After all, he’s one of 40 people memorialized at the nation’s Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., one of eight white people to be so honored.

But now everybody who steps into the Baker County Courthouse can learn what Klunder did and what he meant to the people who loved him — and whom he loved right back.

The memorial includes a description of Klunder’s life and death and a photograph of Klunder looking very much the man of his time, sporting a crew cut, horn-rimmed glasses and a smile.

Friday’s noon event was attended by more than 30 of Klunder’s classmates in Baker High School’s Class of 1954, in town for their 55th class reunion.

That class, one of the most accomplished in school history, included Bobb McKittrick, the famed offensive line coach with the San Francisco 49ers and winner of five Super Bowls, and Mike Doherty, the winningest high school basketball coach Oregon history. Klunder, Doherty and McKittrick were roommates at Oregon State University.

Doherty could not attend Friday’s ceremony because he had duties at a basketball camp, but he wrote in a letter the three roommates “squeezed into a two-man dormitory room as freshmen. We painted the words ‘Baker, Oregon’ on our dorm window and projected the light from a desk lamp on the sign any evening that we were out of our room. We were proud to be from Baker and did not conceal our feelings, probably to the annoyance of many of our college friends.”

“I knew Bruce well, and I am sure I speak for the late Bobb McKittrick in assuring all who did not know Bruce that he was a good man with a good heart,” Doherty wrote. “Our home town of Baker City should be proud to honor one of its finest sons.”

Was it ever.

“Baker High School has certainly had a wealth of wonderful students,” said Allan McCullough, a longtime BHS science teacher.  “A few of them are here right now. But Bruce stood out. He fought a ferocious battle for civil rights. If he were in the military, he would have won the Medal of Honor.”

Debbie Bender came from her home in Gig Harbor, Wash., for the ceremony. Bender, 50, is Klunder’s niece.

“I went to the Civil Rights Memorial, where I saw this man who had been my idol for so long,” she said. “It was then that I began to see him as a man.”

Klunder’s father and Bender’s grandfather, Everett Klunder, wanted his son to be “the pastor of a small-town church” upon his ordination following graduation at Yale Divinity School, Bender remembered, but Bruce Klunder by then had already turned his passion to the civil rights movement.

Bender, who attended the ceremony with her daughter, Molly, said the family was deeply touched by the honor.

“This means the world to my family,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “This is how we remember him — not for what he did, but for who he was.”

Bender said Klunder’s mother, Marie, the longtime Baker County treasurer, saved every letter from Klunder’s widow, Joanne, who kept in touch for decades following her husband’s death right up until Marie Klunder’s death.

“I’ve read those letters,” Bender said. “What a treasure they are.”

Lorraine (Langlite) Conklin of Yakima, Wash., arrived in Baker City just in time for the ceremony.

In the spring of 1954 Conklin attended the junior-senior prom with Klunder. She and Donna Young double-dated with Klunder and McKittrick.

“He was a very genuine man, very nice, very polite,” Conklin said of Klunder. “And he was a very good dancer. What I remember most about that night is that we all had a very good time.”

Doherty and McKittrick paid for a memorial bench to honor their fallen classmate. The bench, which still stands, is near the front of the Memorial Union building on the OSU campus. It has two plaques: “In memory of Rev. Bruce W. Klunder, 1937-1964. OSU 1958, Yale 1961.”

The other plaque contains these words: “Presbyterian minister killed protesting segregated Ohio schools. One of 40 named on national civil rights memorial.”

Doherty remembered a January 1990 observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at Corvallis High School, where he was a teacher and coach.

“(Civil rights pioneer and U.S. Rep.) John Lewis of Georgia was the speaker and was describing the then recently held dedication ceremony for the memorial,” Doherty wrote. “At that time, I realized I was the only person present, including the speaker, who knew that Bruce Klunder, a native Oregonian and a graduate of Oregon State, was listed on the memorial. Only two of those are from west of the Mississippi River. One of those is from Texas, the other is from Baker City, Oregon.”

“He was respected and well-liked by all acquainted with him,” Doherty wrote of his friend, noting that Klunder skipped a grade before high school and graduated from BHS at age 16 with honors.

In college, he was in the marching band and active in his church’s student group.

“Clearly,” Doherty wrote, “Bruce was both prepared and destined to serve others.”