STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

He has gone toe-to-toe with Hannibal Lecter, ridden bulls in a Texas honkytonk and hunted Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic. But ask Scott Glenn what changed his life, and the Hollywood veteran will point to the mountains outside his window in Ketchum, Idaho.

Glenn was the featured speaker this past week at Higher Ground's annual Hero’s Journey fundraiser, where 350 attendees gathered to celebrate the adaptive sports organization that has become a lifeline for veterans, children and adults with disabilities in Sun Valley and beyond.

The actor, who has called Ketchum home for more than 40 years, wove his remarkable life story into a narrative about challenge, resilience and the kind of inner strength that mirrors the journey of every Higher Ground participant who straps into a sit-ski or grips a hold on a climbing wall for the first time.

A Pennsylvania native, Glenn joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve as an artilleryman in 1962, serving three years. He worked for a spell as a reporter for the Kenosha News in Kenosha, Wis., after taking a night course to learn to type.

He wanted to be a screenwriter but discovered he couldn't write compelling dialogue. So, while awaiting a sports job in the Virgin Islands to start, he signed up for an acting class in New York City to sharpen his ear for how people actually talk.

The lightbulb went off: "Holy shit, I'm an actor," he told those attending the gala dinner affair under the tent outside Trail Creek Cabin.

Glenn made props and hung curtains to make ends meet. But one night a man on the barstool next to him asked him about himself. When Glenn told him he had served as a Marine, the man sent him to the best improv class in the city for two months free of charge.

“I asked why. He said, ‘Semper Fi,’ ” Glenn recounted. “The man was Gene Hackman and it was one of the many ways being a Marine has opened doors for me.”

After making his Broadway debut in 1970, James Bridges offered him his first movie role in "The Baby Maker." He spent eight years grinding through small parts in Los Angeles before moving to Ketchum in 1978, where he worked as a barman, huntsman and forest ranger.

The move came courtesy of his wife, Carol, a potter who had been invited to a prestigious pottery-throwing workshop with the Sun Valley Center for the Arts. In hippie-like fashion, she drove to Ketchum in a van, their two daughters in tow. Then, she asked Glenn what he planned to do with himself.

"I had just done two of the greatest movies in Hollywood history — 'Nashville' and 'Apocalypse Now' — so I said, 'I'll wait by the phone for it to ring,' " Glenn told the crowd.

Carol signed him up for an adventure in the Bighorn Crags instead. He met his group in Challis and learned how to self-rescue with ice axes. And every day the beauty of the place took his breath away.

His climbing partner pulled him aside: "Can I give you money to do me a big favor? Tell everyone back in L.A. how much Idaho sucks!"

Back in Los Angeles, Carol found him crying as he watched himself on television.

"You're supposed to get better, not worse," he told her. "It was way better in New York."

It dawned on him that he was thinking about how much money he was making, the politics of the business and who to network with, instead of concentrating on his craft.

"How would you feel about moving back to Idaho?" he asked Carol.

Less than three weeks after settling in Ketchum, the phone rang. An old friend from the Marines was doing a movie and told Glenn he would pay him $3,000 to spend four months in Mexico on a film called "Cattle Annie and Little Britches."

There, Burt Lancaster asked Carol what she did. She showed him pictures of her pottery and he asked her to throw her a dinner set.

“I only have work by one other ceramic artist," Lancaster told her. She later found out the other artist was Picasso.

Two weeks after returning to Ketchum, the phone rang again. “Come do this movie,” Bridges offered him a plane ticket. "You won't ever have to audition again for as long as you live.”

"Forget the plane ticket," Glenn said. "I don't want the studio to have their hooks into me, even for a plane ticket. I'll take my truck and I'll drive down to Houston."

The film was "Urban Cowboy." Glenn played Wes Hightower, the ex-convict, bank robber and bull rider who squared off against John Travolta. And Bridges was right. Glenn never had to audition again — not even for major films.

What followed was one of the most durable careers in American cinema: "The Right Stuff," "Silverado," "The Hunt for Red October," "The Silence of the Lambs" and, most recently, "The White Lotus."

A film featuring Glenn was even used to launch the USS Idaho submarine at its commissioning this year.

“Scott Glenn is part of the language of cinema,” said Hayes MacArthur, a Higher Ground board member who moved with his wife Ali Larter and their children to Ketchum during the COVID pandemic. “His is a career defined by integrity, grit and quiet strength, with a gift for helping people find strength they didn't know they had.”

Glenn told the crowd that one of the things that made him fall in love with Sun Valley was Higher Ground.

"Sam and Peggy Grossman sponsored the Special Olympics and asked me to take care of the skiing," he said. "I thought it was going to be tough, that I'd have to put on a good face. At the end of the day, I realized I hadn't laughed that much and had that much fun in a long time."

While driving his girls to swim meets, he recounted seeing Muffy Davis, who had been paralyzed in a ski accident.

"She lived and is still living the most amazing life I know," Glenn said of the Paralympic medalist. “Marc Mast taught Muffy to ski, and his Sun Valley Adaptive Sports program eventually became Higher Ground. It began by taking care of kids from Blaine County, then expanded to include veterans.”

Glenn also recalled the 2007 Castle Rock fire that destroyed 46,000 acres and hooked around Baldy. He and the girls evacuated, driving through thick smoke and burning embers flying across the highway, and checked in at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas.

At 5 o'clock the next morning the phone rang. Ketchum’s chief of police told him to say goodbye to Carol and the girls and come back as he and incident commander Jeanne Pincha-Tully had tapped him to manage communication during the crisis.

"We had a thousand evacuees, horses that needed a place to stay. We needed safes for artwork and other valuables," Glenn said. "There was an excess of resources because this community looks out for all. Now, here we have Higher Ground taking care of the best of the best — wounded warriors and kids who have been dealt a bad hand. We take care of our own."

Also speaking was Ret. Maj. Scotty Smiley of Pasco, Wash. Smiley attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, then Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga., before taking command of a 45-man platoon at Fort Lewis, Wash.

In 2005, while leading his platoon in Mosul, Iraq he found himself facing down a car bomber from the hatch of his Stryker combat vehicle.

"You can't shoot someone just because you think he might be a bomber,” Smiley said.

The car bomber detonated his payload, and Smiley woke at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, his eyes destroyed and one side of his body paralyzed. But he returned to the Army, becoming the first blind active-duty officer in U.S. military history and being named Soldier of the Year by the Army Times.

He now works with Gonzaga University's ROTC department mentoring future leaders while traveling the country sharing his message of perseverance, courage and hope. His story is recounted in "Hope Unseen."

Higher Ground, now led by Chief Executive Officer Mike Shaughnessy, delivered 1,400 adaptive ski lessons to people like Smiley this past year. The organization served 2,227 unique participants, hosted 28 week-long programs for veterans and first responders and engaged 243 volunteers.

In response, Hero’s Journey diners responded bidding about $20,000 each for a variety of live auction items, including a deep-sea fishing vacation in La Manzanilla, a P-51 Mustang adventure and a Big Buster Hoedown. When it came time to raise paddles of support, several shot up for $50,000 and several more for $25,000.

It was the kind of evening that proved Glenn's point: This community looks out for its own. And Higher Ground makes sure that circle keeps getting wider.