A Montana sapphire fit for a king

Meet the late Will Chaussee. On the outside, he was a cedar lumber owner-dealer. On the inside, he was a mountain man, and he owned a sapphire mine between Hamilton and Philipsburg, Montana.

He retired and annually invited me to his place up in the mountains, where we fished, explored a bit and told stories that were mostly true.

He had returned to Bothell on business and looked in on me at the newspaper there where I worked, and said, “Look what I found at the mine, a sapphire fit for a king.”

That started it, and for the next several month things were not the same.

He showed me the sapphire, which had the shape of a pagoda embedded in it.

I was planning one of my several trips to the Far East, and Will and I decided that I should deliver the sapphire, suitably developed, to the King of Thailand.

There was a call to the Thai embassy in Washington D.C., to find out how to do this, and to get the king’s monogram so that we could use it in the presentation. Soon after, we were headed to a goldsmith in downtown Seattle.

We took the monogram, the sapphire, and Will’s checkbook to the goldsmith. And after an hour of talking and explaining, the goldsmith said he understood.

Meanwhile, I was arranging my itinerary for several days’ stopover in Bangkok, where the king’s palace was located.

After about six weeks, Will returned from the mine so he could pick up the presentation piece from the goldsmith.

It looked great and cost Chaussee a pretty penny.

Then we established contact with the ambassador’s office once again, which advised that we should send his office a letter and provide the dates I would be in Thailand.

A word on how the mine operated: Will would load a huge pile of gravel and dirt from the mine and unload it near his mountain home. Tourists could buy a bucket of material, and with water and a screen, go through it and keep any sapphires they found. Will guaranteed they would find at least one sapphire. If they didn’t, a second bucket was on the house.

Will gave me the presentation case. The sapphire was embedded in the king’s monogram with a gold chain, and this was placed in a gold case on top of blue velvet.

It truly was a gift suitable for a king.

I declared the gift at customs and showed them the letter explaining what I planned to do.

Several days later, after stops in Japan and Hong Kong, I was ready to meet the king, or so I thought.

I called the palace to get instructions on how to access the palace, and a date was set for my visit.

As things go, they never go right when you travel; the king was scheduled to go to Ching Mai, an ancient capital in northern Thailand, the day I planned my visit to the palace.

Not despaired, I made it to the palace, showed them my introduction letter, and referred to my appointment to present a gift to the king.

I was ushered inside to a large reception area, I might add richly furnished, and told to wait.

After about 10 minutes, a Thai official made his way down a long staircase and came up to me and stated, “I am the king’s first secretary; please follow me.”

We went to a presentation room, where I gave him the gift for the king, and explained how all this came about. He apologized that the king was away and asked several questions, demonstrating why he was the king’s first secretary. One question was, “Where is Montana?”

I would have understood if he had asked me where Kansas was, but Montana?

The first secretary explained that once a month, the king went to his gift room and looked at all the gifts that had been given him, and that ours would be among those.

In the meantime, I had learned from Chaussee that he had a purpose in all this. He wanted to find access to Thailand’s blue sapphires, hoping to find a source with which he could trade his sapphires. His were mostly light in color with an occasional orange one, a most rare kind.

Will had given me a small container with about 50 sapphires inside, for trading material.

I did go to a sapphire mine area where people could rent a space and dig.

No real source there, and we left it for another go around, the next year, when I planned to return.

It was truly a sapphire fit for a king, and I hope he enjoyed it.