Freeman Courier: Oct. 24, 2024, Jeremy Waltner

Mike’s Great Adventure

Do you know who would have deeply appreciated the Indigenous Peoples’ Celebration held here last week Wednesday, Oct. 16? Michael Sprong.

But Oct. 16 was the day that Michael — Mike, as I knew him — died. The former rural Freeman resident who had been living his later years in Yankton passed away at the age of 61 after a brief and unexpected hospitalization.

Mike would have appreciated the song and dance and the comments shared by David Flute, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations, because Mike was a man of conviction, of community, of peacemaking, of respect for elders, art and of care for the marginalized. He was a baptized Christian, activist, anarchist, pacifist, one-man revolution who was a host to my sister’s wedding reception and a groomsman at my own wedding almost 21 years ago.

He was as good of a friend as he was a human being.

When I got word of Mike’s death last week, my mind instantly went to a story I wrote about him and the anti-war protest he and another activist took on in June of 2000, when they cut down three wooden poles in the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin that supported a 28-mile antenna used by the U.S. Navy to communicate with submerged submarines carrying first-strike trident nuclear weapons.

They two were initially charged with sabotage and felony destruction of property — charges that were later reduced to destruction of property, a Class A misdemeanor of which both were found guilty. Mike spent 60 days in the federal prison camp in Yankton.

The story I wrote, called “Soldier of Peace,” was published in the Courier in April of 2001 and I remember a gentleman in the community who has since passed away angrily confronting me in the grocery store; how dare I give this man recognition for such an act, he told me, pointing his index finger in my face.

I shared that with Mike, and Mike told me the man in the grocery store probably wasn’t the only one who was upset — not by a longshot.

But Mike had done what he had done out of conviction — out of his life’s work to be an activist for non-violence, even if that meant great sacrifice.

My sister calls our mutual friend “a legend,” and that’s exactly what he was.

Many, many years ago, inside his dining room at Rose Hill Farm southeast of Freeman, I was visiting with Mike and his wife at the time, Beth Preheim, and hearing some of the stories about his colorful life.

“You should write a book,” I told him.

“You should write that book,” he told me. Maybe one day I will, or at least a version of it. It would be the story of a dear friend who made the most of his time here through a life of deep conviction the likes of which I don’t know that I will ever see again. For now, we have his obituary. Godspeed, my friend.

Jeremy is husband to Stacey and Dad to Ella & Oliver. He has fond memories of a trip with Mike to Chicago in 1996 during the Democratic National Convention.