Waving the red flag for water protection

Dennis Brueggemann has finally settled in Coeur d’Alene after a lifetime of travel and work. The past two years, he has lived a different tempo lifestyle and has loved the sense of community here.

Brueggemann grew up in New York and married his wife right after college. The couple was at a dance-marathon for muscular dystrophy.

“We had a lot of time to get to know each other a little better and we both discovered we had in the back of our minds, the Peace Corps.” he remembered.

He and his wife applied to the Peace Corps and both got into the Brazil program. There, they worked with the Special Olympics headquarters to bring Special Olympics to Brazil, which prompted Brueggemann's lifelong career.

He spent about 30 years working for Special Olympics around the world.

Fourteen years ago, Brueggemann and his wife decided to move to the Northwest. They had a friend in Kellogg who suggested they move there. They visited and found Coeur d’Alene.

They bought a house, but Brueggemann was still traveling for work in South America. Two years ago, he came back to retire.

“I’m trying to find a place where I could fit into supporting a community, because my entire life, I haven’t really had my own community,” Brueggemann said. “I was traveling or living in different places. It’s difficult to get involved in local activities. Here, I can start doing that.”

At 66 years old, Brueggemann has become very involved with the waterkeeper program run by Kootenai Environmental Alliance. This summer, he rode his bike 1,000 kilometers to raise money and awareness about Coeur d’Alene’s water.

Dennis Brueggemann sat down with The Press to talk about his life adventures and his newfound ones here in Coeur d’Alene.

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Tell me about your career with Special Olympics.

In the Peace Corps, we worked with the Special Olympic headquarters and we trained other Peace Corps volunteers and their local villages to run training programs for athletes. Then we organized the first event and all the Peace Corps volunteers came with delegations from their towns; we had the first event ever and it was a success.

That was when I knew this is something I really wanted to do.

Well, we moved to headquarters. We had our 10-month-old adopted son and he was traveling with us as I went to all these interviews. I got a position in Albany, N.Y. I started out as a program director for Special Olympics in New York, then executive director for Special Olympics in Minnesota.

Then I had the opportunity to go for nine months to Paris because they were in a transitional regional office there.

I was reluctant to go to Paris. I went to DC for my interview and the same day they offered me to go to Paris. I said well, I better discuss this with my wife first. By the time I had gotten home from my three-hour flight from Minneapolis, she had put the Eiffel Tower in front of our door, bigger than life, telling everyone we were out of there.

I have to give a lot of credit to her because she’s the one that always encourages us to do things like that. She said ‘don’t worry, we’ll take the kids out of school, they’ll learn French,’ and they did. It’s been quite an adventure.

We ended up staying eight years.

We developed all these programs in the East. The Berlin Wall had just come down and we went over into central Europe and eastern Europe. It was quite exciting, and for the kids it was just a great experience.

From there I went back to headquarters and was in charge of international development programs around the world for a couple of years. We decentralized the Special Olympics and set up regional offices. Then I accepted an opportunity to go to Latin America, it was supposed to be a short-term thing but I ended up staying there for 13 years.

What was your wife doing this whole time?

She worked with Special Olympics for about 10 years. When we were in France, she got the kids acclimated to living there. She’s a language teacher by trade. She’s completely fluent in Spanish and French. She was serving as a volunteer when she wasn’t working.

We are going on to our 40th anniversary this year.

So you are the waterkeeper, what does that entail?

A waterkeeper is someone who’s really concerned about the health and protection of water in general, so future generations can fish and swim and have water to drink.

So the whole purpose of the waterkeeper program, which is relatively new but it’s also an international organization now, is to make people aware that water is our most precious resource and it’s at risk.

What really captivated my interest in working with the Kootenai Environmental Alliance, which oversees this program, was some of the conversations I heard from people about the quality of our lake here. And Fernan Lake, which is one of my passionate places to go running and canoeing and cycling along, is you know, looks like it’s dying. So what can be done to improve the quality of this lake?

And then at that GEM Symposium in March, people were saying Lake Coeur d’Alene is at risk.

That got me thinking, why hasn’t the community raised a big red flag and said why aren’t we doing something about this? I guess it’s not a priority or people don’t have enough information about it. In my humble opinion, if the lake dies, Coeur d’Alene dies, because we are so dependent on that lake for many things, including economic impact.

I think the general health of our lake here, the Spokane River and our other water sources is really important.

For me, it’s a unifying factor, everyone needs water and everyone likes water.

Tell me about this big bike adventure you just went on.

One of my passions is fitness and health, and when I retired I really took an interest in my own health and lost some weight and started running and cycling, becoming more active. I feel I’m in the best shape in my life right now.

So I wanted to run this half marathon in Grand Teton Park. And from there, I decided I’d ride home, or a distance. And that all came about three months ago that I decided to do that. So I registered for the event and I thought about where I was going to ride to. And then I was like ‘Now that I’m with this organization with the waterkeepers, why don’t I raise some money for them through this ride.’

I was going to do it solo because there was no time to organize a group effort.

I chose to ride 1,000 kilometers to really test myself. Doing it solo, I had to carry 50 pounds of equipment on my bike and I wanted to see if I could do it.

We initially thought I would ride back to Coeur d’Alene, but I spent a lot of time in Teton National Park and then I went up to Yellowstone and spent some time there, then I ended up in Missoula, Mont.

When I got there I was just over 1,000 kilometers.

The funny story is that I had perfect weather for two weeks and no flat tires. That last day, I had gale force winds, hail, rain and I got three flat tires coming into Missoula.

It was meant to be. Once I achieved 1,000, I said I was good. And I completed it early. I gave myself three weeks and I completed it in two.

I spent a lot of time talking to people. I used it as a field test to meet people and get a read on what people know about waterkeepers, and everyone was interested. They were looking at my bike, it attracted some attention. It was fun.

The response was pretty amazing. I didn’t know what I was going to receive, but right now I think we’ll exceed $3,000 from individuals.

And what is that money going to?

The waterkeeper’s educational program and maybe cleaning up Fernan Lake. But for me the big issue is education.

My long-term vision, it would be great if we could have some curriculum incorporated in schools at a certain level, whether it’s the first-grade class or the third-grade class, just so everyone has a basic understanding of the importance of water and the quality of water and what’s involved with that.

I would really like to think outside the box because the need is huge.

One of the things I learned on my ride, because I took a banner that talked about my ride and the water keepers program, I took it through the park and I would get tourists who wanted a photo with me and I would get to explain who I was and what a waterkeeper is. What I discovered is that most people don’t know what waterkeepers are and the importance of them.

So the need for education is huge.

What is something you are working on now?

We started an educational campaign just as a field test to talk to the second-graders at Sorensen Elementary School about it. They as youngsters also understand the importance of water.

For me it’s like a rallying call here. If we don’t do something, if we don’t reverse the trend, then there’s something that could drastically change and could eventually be irreversible.

I’m keen on education. I’m trying to get our waterkeeper program to rally behind an educational program that will reach youngsters and adults. It’s through education where you learn what you should be doing or what you shouldn’t be doing.

One thing I’ve really learned through the Special Olympics, is if you build the grassroots, anything is possible.

We saw a big change in Special Olympics when we went to educate and engage youth, because they are the future leaders and they have all the right ideas.

What is a quality in someone else you most admire.

The quality I see in many people, they want to give, to improve somebody else’s life or improve their communities. And all the time we spent overseas in very poor countries, they gave as much as we give here in this country, it doesn’t matter. There is this bottom line that people will give. There’s more commonality among us, regardless of your economic status or the resources you have.

It’s what I think kept me going all those years.

People can really feel good by giving, and I see a lot of that in this town. From an environmental standpoint I’d like to see more people get involved with the protection of what we have that is so unique.