REVIEW: Top stories on target
As it is a common practice for each of us to take a look back at the end of a calendar year, I especially appreciate the end of the year reviews by the media. I thought the Top 10 list of regional stories for 2015 selected by the Coeur d’Alene Press were excellent choices. As to the invitation you gave your readers to add our thoughts, I would only suggest an honorable mention of the 2015 Coeur d’Alene City Council election. Local governments, especially cities, have direct and important impacts on our daily lives. The fact that the City of Coeur d’Alene became the first city in Idaho to be selected to receive the “All American City Award” in 1990 is ample evidence that the voters’ choices for mayors and council members are important. The Coeur d’Alene Press coverage of the 2015 Coeur d’Alene City Council election was extraordinarily well done and demonstrated the height of professional journalism.
I also appreciated the photos of the year selected by the Coeur d’Alene Press including civil rights activist James Meredith as well as the 5th-grade Winton Elementary Body Sox Dancers. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations provided the grant money to the Coeur d’Alene School District for the purchase of the body sox’s from our successful “Lemons to Lemonade Fund Campaign” as a counter to the Aryan Nations march on Sherman in July 1998.
On January 14, the KCTFHR and the Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene schools will sponsor and celebrate the 31st year of the 5th grade students’ celebration and honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Birthday. The body sox dancers will perform again at the event for the 17th consecutive year. The MLK Children’s Program has hosted over 36,000 fifth graders since the inception of the event.
Also, thanks and congratulations on that awesome editorial featuring the First Christian Church of Coeur d’Alene and its generous gifts to all those worthwhile charities after selling their property. Please allow me to share an historical footnote regarding that special church and its leaders. After the terrible incident by the Aryan Nations in victimizing Sid Rosen by targeting his restaurant in Hayden with anti-Semitic hate messages in December 1980, eight of us met in the basement of the First Christian Church in Coeur d’Alene one evening the first week of February in 1981, showed a film about the KKK and decided to establish the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. We elected as our first president Rev. Rick Morris, who was at that time the pastor of the First Christian Church. The site of the First Christian Church in Coeur d’Alene has an important historical meaning for us. By the way, there were about six members of the Aryan Nations present in the back of the room attempting to intimidate us.
Happy New Year to everyone!
TONY STEWART
Coeur d’Alene