Those protesters quickly learned that you do not mess with Elton Woodrow “Mick” Ringsak.

Mick was 80 years old when Sen. Jon Tester came to town to have a conversation with some of his constituents at the Montana Tech Library Auditorium. A group of five or six college-age protesters also rolled in, ready to disrupt that talk.

It was in the fall of 2023, a month or so after the horrific Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.

A few dozen peopled showed up to see Sen. Tester that day. Most of us were there to ask for help with environmental cleanups because we were not getting any from local, state or federal government.

Butte-Silver Bow was backing a plan by British Petroleum to dump toxic waste in the old Dublin Gulch neighborhood and near homes in Centerville, and the Environmental Protection Agency was looking the other way.

Butte-Silver Bow and the EPA were publicly defending BP’s plan to leave waste in place as a cost-cutting measure while cleaning up the center of town poisoned by a century of runoff from mining waste.

As resident after resident asked Sen. Tester a question and begged him for help, these protesters kept getting up and yelling about the mistreatment of the Palestinian people by Israel.

Sen. Tester, who was Chair of the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee of Appropriations, answered every question about Israel in a very thoughtful manner, but that was not enough for the protesters, who were not from the area.

Nobody in the crowd disagreed with the protesters, including Sen. Tester. We all thought the treatment of the Palestinian people was horrible. It was horrible before the Oct. 7 attacks, and it continues to be horrible.

So, too, were the attacks on Israel. There was no winner, no matter how loudly anyone yelled.

Also, nobody was telling these people they did not have the right to speak up and ask those questions, even though the point of the appearance was to talk about making improvements in Butte and Silver Bow County. Sen. Tester was trying to see how he could help us.

But the protesters kept interrupting in an attempt to highjack the entire appearance. That made the protesters seem so disingenuous. They reminded me so much of some of those fake environmentalists in Missoula.

You know the type. The cosmetic conservationists who would clean the dog crap out of their own yard only to throw it into yours. They cheered the remediation of the Milltown Dam, but do not seem to give a rip that contamination remained upstream in the Clark Fork River basin.

Those protesters also seemed very uneducated about their own protest. They did not know what to say after Tester answered their questions, so they just yelled louder and louder.

They were not interested in dialog. They were only there to cause a scene.

After the final question, Sen. Tester attempted to thank the crowd for coming and engaging in meaningful conversation. Then the group of protesters started to yell even more.

They broke into a chant as they tried to unveil a banner that, for some reason, they made with a fitted bed sheet with elastic on the corners.

When they pulled out their banner, they held it up backward. As they tried to turn it around, Mick ripped the sheet out of their hands, balled it up while walking up the aisle, and emphatically slammed it into a garbage can.

Those protesters took one look at Mick, a Vietnam veteran who was proudly wearing that on his hat, and knew better than to try to get the banner back. Then, to the delight of the rest of the audience, they shut up.

Mick 1, Protesters 0.

Mick picked up another victory one night at a Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners meeting. Mick and his pals got wind that a former cleanup ally was going to speak in favor of the “waste-in-place” plan by BP and Butte-Silver Bow.

That came after the former ally wrote a pair of letters to the editor of The Montana Standard protesting the same “waste-in-place” process in the not-so-distant past. After writing those letters, the author, for some reason, completely reversed his opinion.

He suddenly thought waste in place was a great idea, and he was going to speak as if he was a mouthpiece for BP. Mick was not going to let that hypocrisy go unnoticed or unchecked.

Armed with copies of each of the letters, Mick raced to the podium to speak first when the invitation for public comment on agenda items was extended to the crowd. He had not moved that fast in years.

The former ally had stood up, hoping to speak first. But he had to sit back down because of Mick’s hustle.

Then, Mick used his time to read those letters to the editor, and the former ally stammered and stuttered when it came time for him to publicly reverse course.

Mick 1, Insincerity 0.

Mick passed away June 23 after a battle with cancer, and we already miss his fight. That’s what Mick was. He was a fighter.

He was a fighter for truth and justice. For 83 years, Mick fought for what was right.

Mick started fighting for us from a young age. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Army, and he went on to join the Corps of Engineers. He attained the rank of Major.

In Vietnam, Mick led the construction of a road through the country. Today, that road is a major highway. Later, he was knighted by the Tunisian government after he led the charge to rebuild three critical railroad bridges after they were washed away by flooding.

For years, Mick ran Miller’s Boots & Shoes with his brother-in-law Dan McElroy. He also served as the Small Business Administration’s Region 8 administrator under President George W. Bush.

In that job, Mick was able to fight for the little guys looking to do big things. Just ask John McKee, the owner of Headframe Spirits in Butte. Mick’s work helped turn a dream into a successful reality.

Mick did that for so many dreams over those eight years.

Mick was also a member of the Upper Clark Fork River Advisory Council, and he was a founding member of the Butte Watchdogs for Social & Environmental Justice.

Right up until the day he died, Mick was fighting for people who needed a fighter in their corner. He fought for proper Superfund cleanup in Butte. He fought for the parents who do not even realize that their babies are being poised by the high levels of lead the EPA has allowed to stay in place in their backyards.

In his final days, he was fighting against data centers running up our power bills and using up our water.

Thanks to Mick, the good guys won those fights over waste in place and dumping near homes —in Centerville and the Timber Butte area.

The EPA is now going to lower the acceptable level of lead in Butte yards and attics, too.

Lots of variables played into these victories for the people. Government leaders will tell us they were just doing their due diligence. BP and the EPA will tell us that their studying led them to better positions or better options.

But we know the truth. We know all those victories had one thing in common.

We had Mick Ringsak on our side.

— Bill Foley can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.