Using His Cranium

Clyde's skeleton was a magnificent specimen -- the biggest dog skeleton Krantz had ever seen, and he'd seen lots. As he cleaned it, he pondered the bittersweetness of love.

"Maybe we shouldn't get so attached to other beings, whether they be people, dogs or whatever," he wrote. "By projecting so much of ourselves into them, we only make ourselves vulnerable to the hurt of losing them. But then, if we didn't, we wouldn't really be human, would we?"

Searching for Sasquatch

Krantz got other Irish wolfhounds: Icky, then Yahoo, then Ralf. He loved them all, but none quite as much as Clyde.

He spent three decades at Wazoo, teaching anthropology, human evolution and forensics while running the university's anthropology lab. It included a huge collection of skeletons, many of which he'd processed in the makeshift graveyard on his lawn.

His tests were notoriously difficult, but his classes filled up anyway because he was so much fun. And he didn't restrict his teaching to the classroom.

"He liked to go down to the student union building and have his lunch and sit with the graduate students and sort of hold court, talking about whatever subject came up," recalls Tyler. "He knew a lot about a lot of things -- World War II history, military history in general, current events."

He did archaeological field work in China and Indonesia. He wrote learned books titled "The Process of Human Evolution" and "Climatic Races and Descent Groups." But when he became famous, it was for his hobby -- chasing Sasquatch.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, Krantz heard lots of stories about the apelike "Bigfoot" creatures rumored to reside in remote forests. Curious, he chased down the rumors, interviewing alleged witnesses, analyzing photos, making plaster casts of footprints supposedly left by Bigfoot.

Slowly he came to believe that Sasquatch might exist, and he said so in several books. Naturally, that attracted a lot of publicity, which did not help his academic career.

"He was slow to advance to full professor, because they thought he was embarrassing the university with the Sasquatch thing," says Tyler. "Grover was extremely stubborn. He could have played it better politically. But that wasn't him. If he believed he was right, he did what he wanted."

In 1981 a Colorado woman named Diane Horton read a story on Krantz's search for Sasquatch in a Denver newspaper. A water quality inspector with a master's degree in biology, she wrote him a letter asking intelligent questions. He wrote back. They began a correspondence, then met at a scientific conference. About a year later, they married.

"He was just delightfully refreshing," she recalls. "I was 37 and he was 49 and we were both divorced, and it was nice to meet somebody who had a brain and sense of humor."

When he married Diane, Grover told Tyler: "This is it. This is gonna be the last one."

He was right. His fourth marriage lasted, although it wasn't easy living with him and his Irish wolfhounds and his skeletons. Diane tolerated his eccentricities, but she drew the line when he wanted to search for Sasquatch in his homemade ultralight flying machine.

In 1998 he retired, and they moved to Washington's Olympic Peninsula. And then he got cancer. As his big, strong body melted away, he pondered a question only an anthropologist would ask: What should I do with my bones?

He wanted somebody to use his bones the way he used bones -- as teaching tools.

He called Dave Hunt at the Smithsonian. Hunt agreed to accept Krantz's skeleton and to keep it with the bones of Clyde, Icky and Yahoo.

Grover died on Valentine's Day 2002. At his request, there was no funeral. Instead, his body was shipped to the University of Tennessee's "body farm," where scientists study human decay rates -- valuable information for detectives and coroners investigating murders.

In 2003, his skeleton arrived at the Smithsonian and Hunt laid it in its final resting place -- in that pale green cabinet, just below the drawer that holds Clyde.

"Some of his students have gone there to see his skeleton," Diane says. "It was a type of closure for them."

She hasn't made any visits yet. "I'm not ready for it," she says.

It's All in the Bones

Dave Hunt picks up Grover's left thighbone and points to the top, where the bone is pitted.

"You can see the arthritic activity here," he says.

He picks up a plastic bag filled with rib bones and points out how the ends have worn into a forked shape. "You get these crab claw ends," he says. "Those are normal changes due to old age."

Not long ago, he used Grover's bones to give the same lesson to a group of detectives in a forensics class, showing them how to determine the age of the skeletons they come across in their line of work.

He also used Grover's skeleton when teaching a class in advanced osteology to George Washington University students. He spread the bones out on a work table and gave the students three sets of X-rays, one of them Grover's. Their assignment: Figure out which X-rays went with the skeleton.

"Grover wanted to continue being a teacher," Hunt says. "And he is."

Hunt believes in the power of bones as educational tools. In fact, he has already arranged to donate his skeleton to the museum's collection. Several other Smithsonian scientists, including Burgess and Stanford, are also considering donating their bones.

Diane Horton, Grover's widow, may do that, too. "I probably will, but I haven't done the paperwork," she says. "I'm either going to get cremated or I'll join him there."

Then, remembering the dogs, she corrects herself. "Join them ."

She likes the idea that somebody could learn something from her bones. But there's another reason, too.

"Dave Hunt says that if I went there," she says, "Grover and I could be the first couple."