Ace Walden: Man of the people

Ace Walden has been through this 103 times. The cards, the balloons, the cake, the accolades, and yes, the pictures.

"If you want to scare little kids, take a picture of me," he says with a laugh and smile.

The patriarch of Coeur d'Alene, an icon to many and the man who had a bust created in his honor, marked his 103rd birthday on May 17. As he sits in the living room of his home that offers a sweeping view of Lake Coeur d'Alene, he happily greets guests and makes jokes at his own expense.

"My dad said I looked like a jackass chewing thistles," he says.

But wisecracks aside, the son of Percy and Emma Walden has clearly left his signature on the Lake City, starting from the day he arrived in 1911 when he was just 4 years old.

Indeed, consider what bears his influence in Coeur d'Alene:

There's the Walden House, a place people stay while loved ones are in treatment at the hospital.

There's the Kootenai Cancer Center, which Ace and wife Ellen were instrumental in founding.

There's 42 years in the banking community, 50 years in the Rotary Club and 30 years in the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce. He worked with the North Idaho College Foundation and the KMC Foundation.

And he did it all, he did what he did, because he could. Because he wanted to. Because there were people who needed help, and he had the means - and the heart - to give it.

"I don't figure that I have accomplished an awful lot," he says as he looks up. "I helped a lot of people and I feel good about that. I think if you have money it's a pretty good idea to spend it. And I believe that in this life when you break it down into the right kind of chunks, it's the people that make the difference. It's the people that really amount to something. It helps the world go around. The Lord is good. You aren't being paid for anything you've done."

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How are you feeling today?

Pretty good. At my age, you don't feel like jumping and running. I can't walk. Outside of that I feel all right.

Did you ever think you'd live to be 103 years old?

No, I should say not. It's a gift and why, I don't know. It isn't a result of having done anything. I thought for a while they lost my name in the file cards somewhere. But I'm still around. It's just a gift.

What are a few key lessons you've learned about life?

People, mainly. And a belief in God is important. And doing the best you can. Whatever that happens to be. You shouldn't do less than that. You should try to do your best at all times. You have to be lucky, too.

Do you consider yourself lucky?

You're darn right.

Why are you lucky?

I found something to do that I liked. Banking. I was pretty good at it, and I made a good living at it.

When did you go into banking?

It was right in the middle of a big depression. Bankers weren't thought very highly of either at that time. I went to work 10 hours a day, the first five days of the week and eight hours on Saturday, I'd go back on Sunday and clean up the desk. Fifty dollars a month. I was on probation for a year. I was told by the head of the personnel department that anytime they decided I wasn't what they wanted, all they had to do was tell me, and I had to get up and go. Every morning when I reported to work, I thought maybe that was the day. But they kept me for some reason.

I went to work in the bank largely because I had this accounting background. I decided I wanted to see how the banks kept books.

How did you like it?

I was very disappointed after about a month that some people who worked in the bank I thought were brilliant, I found that most of them were plodders. They did their work, they got it done, that was it.

Banking was quite a bit different then. The thing that was really bad about it, at night if the various departments didn't add up to what they should be, we were all back there at 7 a.m. to find the error before opening. We got pretty good at finding errors.

Was it difficult to turn people down for loans?

I learned rather early in life it's the people that are important. All of them are different. It isn't fair, I think, to sit in judgment of people when they ask for a loan and find out how they paid their bills, how much money they owed and how much they earned, and what their bad habits were and things like that.

So you say yes and they get the loan. You say no, and as my wife said, they get the hell out.

I hate to think of banking as judging people because that shouldn't be allowed. How much money they have in their pocket is not a value of an individual at all.

Loans are not easy to decide on. I made several of them over a million dollars. I could tell you some stories. I've got lots of them about banking. Many of them are not about a lot of money.

Could you share one of those stories?

I loaned a boy $16 once, to buy a pair of boots in the winter time. He was sitting at my desk and the water is coming off his shoes onto the floor. His socks are sticking out of those shoes. So I loaned him $16 to go with the $9 he had to go buy a pair of boots. He made $6 a week. He's 16 years old. He's going to pay me a dollar on that loan every Saturday morning. And he made every payment. Right on time. And thanked me for it. The girl in the bookkeeping department pointed out, that's an illegal loan, he isn't old enough to borrow money from the bank. I said, 'Yes.' I turned the note over and put my initials on the back of it. I said, 'If he gets 24 hours late on any payment, you bring the note up to my desk, and I'll pay it.'

What was it like when you came to Coeur d'Alene?

When I came here I was 4 years old. June 12, 1911. We came in a boxcar. We were broke. Me, my parents and my older brother. My father went to work the next morning in a one-man sawmill. Twelve hours a day, six days a week, 10 cents an hour. And Coeur d'Alene was a sawmill town, and that's all it was. And if you worked in a sawmill and you worked seven months out of the year, you had a good year. The other five months, you didn't do anything. The mills closed down because they couldn't get the logs to market. The weather was bad, you've got snow and ice. Everybody was in trouble. You had difficulties, so did your neighbor, so did the fellow across the street. That made it a little easier because everybody had pretty much the same difficulties. You tried not to spend any money for five months.

Did you go to work at a young age?

I sold newspapers on the downtown streets of Coeur d'Alene when I was 6 years old. Tried to make 30 cents a night. They didn't have a Sunday edition. They came here at 3:30. If we hurried why we could get down to the train depot at 3:30 and buy two papers for a nickel and sell them for a nickel apiece. I continued to sell and deliver newspapers until I was a junior in high school.

Who most influenced your life?

One was my mother, the other was my wife. I was just dinging along when I got married. This little Swedish girl with bright-blue eyes and corn-colored hair, she installed in me the desire to be ambitious. She built some enthusiasm and some desire in me I didn't have before that. It worked out real good. I did all right in the banking business.

It might interest you to know I never asked for a raise in my life, and I never asked for a step up. Everything I got in the banking business, they gave me. I always felt good about that.

How come you never asked for a raise?

I didn't believe in it. I knew banking was not making a lot of money for a long time, until 1936 when things got better. I was making $95 a month when I got married. But I had two jobs downtown I didn't tell anybody about in the bank. I kept books for two garages downtown, and I made $25 a month from each of them. Many times I worked clear through the night because we had trouble balancing the books.

But you're young and strong and ambitious, so you do it.

What was your dad like?

He was tremendous. My father never went to school a day in his life. He had four other younger brothers and sisters. He drove them eight miles to the one-room schoolhouse when it was open and he took care of the horses and equipment and stuff. My father made so much money he retired before he got married. Then, he and three other fellows established a company and decided to buy grain futures on the margin. He lost every nickel he had in 13 days. When we came to Coeur d'Alene, we didn't have anything.

What about your mom?

My mother raised the family. My father was too busy all the time trying to make a nickel or a dime. If there was something wrong at the house, when he came home he worked at it. But my mother raised the kids and took care of them. She only had an eighth-grade education. She was wonderful. She really was. She not only was an excellent cook and a hard worker, she could do everything. She watched over her brood pretty well. She read us like a Saturday Evening Post. She took awful good care of us.

She tried to live to be 70, but she missed it by about a week.

Life is a strange thing, you know. A gal says yes, back in those days, that's her life. She has a family, raises kids, takes care of people, does everything. She gets by with whatever the husband brings home. Tough life.

Any regrets? Anything you wish you hadn't done, or anything you wish you had done?

There are lots of things I wish I hadn't done. I wish I hadn't tried to be an athlete. I didn't have the equipment to be a success at it. I should have known that.

Things I would have liked to have done? I don't think so. I was pretty knowledgeable about money. Even when I started to work at the bank I didn't have much of it. You kind of limit yourself and what you can do with what you bring in. And you realize that if you don't have this, you can't do it. You have to be honest. It hurts like hell sometime to admit that the man next door or the fellow worker alongside of you is better equipped or better given opportunities to get more dollars. And you fight like hell to get some. But that's the way life is. The only thing anybody could do, and that is to do their best, whatever that is. You won't ever feel right if you don't do your best and you run into a wall somewhere. But if you do your best, regardless of how it turns out, you can feel good about it because you gave it the best you have. You can't do any more than that.

I used to tell kids when I would teach them about banking, if they didn't like banking, they should find something else to do. In my opinion, and I'm not always right, to be successful at something, you have to enjoy it. You have to like it. You have to want to get more of it. Get right in the middle of it and slop it around. If you don't feel that way about it, you limited yourself to begin with and you're not going to climb very far, regardless of what it is.

Did you have a good life?

I've enjoyed it. I've been lucky. I've had enough money so I haven't had to worry about that. I've been able to help things along that I wanted to help, especially in Coeur d'Alene. If you look around, you'll find the many places I've helped. My wife had the same ideas I did. So when you look back and you think you've done something for the community and you've helped some people, you feel pretty good about it. It's nice to do things for people. You've got the money. Money is no good unless it's spent. It's no good to hang on to it. So I've got my name kicking around in a lot of places. And Ellen's, too, the Walden House and places like that. Yes, I feel good about it.

Did you spend time at the Walden House?

I used to go down to the Walden House every week, talk to the people and answer their questions. And listen to their stories. They would come here not knowing how bad their cancer might be. Maybe it's going to be three or four months. And they can't drive back and forth everyday. It's too costly and takes too much time. I think the Walden House is a complete blessing for a great many people. I thoroughly am happy I had a little something to do with it. And Ellen, too.

If you can help people, and if they appreciate it, life gets a little rosier, too. You know? Cause I've had cancer eight times. I know a little something about it. I use to go down there every week and talk to them, because I knew what their problem was and what they keep thinking about. Are they going to make it, or aren't they?

How important is God and faith in your life?

I have belonged to the First Presbyterian church here since I was 14 years old. I haven't been able to go to church for a long time because I can't walk, but I send them money every week, the same amount I would pay if I went there.

I'm aware there is a just God. I'm aware he watches over all of us. I'm aware he does what he should do, and we may be a little clumsy. I have not always been a good guy. I have made some mistakes. Some bad ones. And some of them I've never forgiven myself for.

Overall, is this a good world we're living in?

The world is a wonderful place, and it's got a lot of rough edges to it. You don't always get what you're trying to get. You're not always successful. There are times somebody else beats you out, but if you do your best, that's all there is to it. You don't have any butts to kick when you go to bed at night. You did everything you could, it wasn't enough, well then there's tomorrow. You try it again.