Rich, 85, Leaves Legacy Of Stories Friends, Family Recall Popular Moonshiner Who Died This Week

Rumor has it the moonshine still Poppy Rich built continues to operate somewhere in the backwoods of North Idaho, long after he gave up the distilling business.

It’s the kind of legend that relatives like to spread about Rich, who died Tuesday in Kellogg at age 85.

His corn-liquor-making machine was confiscated in Fernwood by the Benewah County Sheriff’s Department in 1960. Law officers put the still in a pickup and drove it to St. Maries. But it disappeared before it could be dismantled and supposedly still is producing, said Ruby Burress, Rich’s daughter.

Bob Baltz, who was Benewah County sheriff for 28 years, chuckled over the story. The still, he said, was in the basement of the sheriff’s department when he left office in 1982.

No matter. This much is undisputed. Chasing a rumor about one of the two or three stills in the county, Baltz knocked on the door of Columbus A. “Poppy” Rich’s house one January night 36 years ago and said, “Columbus, are you making moonshine?”

“I can’t tell a lie,” Rich replied. “Yes, Bob, I am.”

Rich led the sheriff to the shed near the house where he kept equipment for turning 200 pounds of mash into eight gallons of ‘shine.

“It set me back,” Baltz said. “People just don’t confess their sins that easily.”

Rich went to the county jail for only a month, his light sentence a product of his honesty, the former sheriff said. The family salvaged all but one gallon of the last batch.

Rich was proud of his reputation as a moonshiner, “because he was very good at it,” Burress said. He learned the vocation in the Great Smokies of his native North Carolina.

“It was a mountain inheritance - generation to generation” that he turned into a sideline to help support his family, his daughter recalled. Whenever Burress visits North Carolina, people tell her Rich was the best moonshiner there ever was.

“He was real crafty with making liquor stills - he made them all over North Carolina,” Burress said. “The last one I know of was cut down (destroyed) three years ago.”

In 1956, a doctor recommended Rich move to Alaska or Idaho for the health of his wife, Lena, who still lives in Kellogg. He chose Idaho because he had a friend here.

Rich went to work as a gandy-dancer on the Milwaukee Railroad when he first came to Idaho, then labored for Tyson Creek Lumber Co. and Fernwood Tie. After retiring in 1981 he moved to Kellogg.

His reputation for honing an edge made him the community knife and saw sharpener for Fernwood - a talent daughter Burress wishes he had passed along. He loved to hunt, especially bears, because he loved bear roast and bear stew.

He gardened. “Anything with a bloom, he loved, especially roses,” daughter Burress said.

Rich fathered four sons - Robert, Calvin, Larry and Lee - and two daughters, both named Ruby. “He never did say (why) other than he liked the name Ruby,” Burress said.

Larry and Lee died in a car accident in 1980. “It about faced the old guy off,” said former Sheriff Baltz.

“It’s still hard for my mother,” said Burress.

Dubbed “Poppy” because he was grandfather to everyone, Rich took great pride in his wife and family and spent much of his last years baby-sitting his two great-grandchildren.

His lifetime wish was to visit Alaska. His children gave their parents a monthlong trip there as a 50th wedding anniversary present in 1989.

He also wanted to return to the Smoky Mountains - where he learned his legendary liquor-distilling skills - the last couple of years. That wish went unfulfilled.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Memorial services for Columbus A. “Poppy” Rich will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Osburn VFW Hall followed by a potluck luncheon. Steve Hodgeman will give the eulogy.