Mel Schmidt: Teacher, coach and Vandal forever

COEUR d’ALENE — They go way back. Way, way back.

Mel Schmidt from Coeur d’Alene High School and Jerry Kramer from Sandpoint High School butted heads on the football field, then played as teammates for three years at the University of Idaho.

Now octogenarians, the two also made a six-day sojourn to Wisconsin to play for Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers.

“Thanks to Jerry Kramer, I got help,” Schmidt said. “I got taken care of.”

Schmidt remembers more fans turned out to watch the Packer practices than attended Vandal games.

And Lombardi was the real deal, he said.

“He was tough and ornery but at the same time, if he didn’t like something you did he’d pat you on the back and say, ‘Go out and get ‘em.’

“He said what he meant and he meant what he said — and you’d better understand it.”

Schmidt made it to the final cut, then was offered to be traded. He opted to head home.

He and Kramer, who went on to have a sterling NFL career, remain special friends. The last time they were together was at a U of I function at Hayden Lake Country Club just last week.

“When Kramer got through hugging me I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere. He’s a big guy and he gave me a big squeeze and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to breathe or get up on the golf cart,” he said.

After the Packers experience, Schmidt spent 35 years in education both as a teacher and coach, encouraging others to strive for the summit.

He arrived in Coeur d’Alene in 1935 as a toddler after the Depression drought wiped out his parents’ ranch in South Dakota. No hay, no water. Desperate measures.

“My father loved horses,” Schmidt said. “He had to dig a hole and put 50 horses in it, shoot them and cover them up. We got in the car and drove to Coeur d’Alene.”

The family had relatives in Hayden Lake but they lived in a home on Front Street near the Potlatch lumber mill. His father worked for the Department of Highways, which proved to be a boyhood dream.

“This was just before World War II so there weren’t any motels or anything. So during the oiling season to fix the roads we took a tent and sleeping bags and they would go out and do the roadwork and we would camp,” he said. “It was always fun all the time because we got to sleep in different places.”

Schmidt and his buddies also found other ways to have fun. Like running the log booms at Potlatch.

“Sometimes they caught me and my dad would be waiting with a stick,” he said. “We weren’t allowed to be on the log booms but we were always out there.”

Then there was pushing over the Potlatch stacked lumber from a railroad car. That stunt actually earned them money after being hired by the mill.

“If they didn’t pay us we’d come back at night and push them over and they’d have to hire us the next day,” he said.

At night they also water skied on Lake Coeur d’Alene after hot-wiring one of the few power boats that was moored at the time.

Schmidt, now 82, was a little more calm and controlled when he attended CHS, where he met his future wife, Jackie. They were married in 1957, the year he graduated from the U of I. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

While dating, Schmidt, who worked for the Boat restaurant on the raucous East Sherman sector during the Farragut Naval Training Station years, would collect the sailors’ discarded beer bottles in the morning and exchange them for a penny apiece, which was enough to take Jackie to a movie at the former Roxey Theater on Fourth Street, which always, always played Westerns, Schmidt’s second love — especially Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

His mentor in high school was his football and basketball coach, Elmer Jordan, who advised him to go into education in college. Schmidt wanted to pursue engineering because of his time watching his father do road repair. The U of I also told him to reconsider because the challenge of the university’s renowned engineering college and football at the same time would be too much. Schmidt chose education and became a career starter at fullback and linebacker for the Silver and Gold.

“I graduated next door to the University of Idaho. So I will always be an Idaho Vandal,” he said.

Schmidt taught and coached three years at CHS, one year at West Valley High School, three years at Shadle Park High School and 24 years at Ferris High School before retiring 24 years ago.

Today, he and Jackie tend to their 5-acre property on Hayden Lake, attend grandchildren’s sports functions and watch Westerns. John Wayne has usurped Roy Rogers lately.

The Schmidts relish what they have.

“I’ve learned a lot from those kind people as far as being a husband, a teacher and a father, There’s always good people here. You can get good help and good answers, and I’ve never forgotten that all the places I’ve been,” Schmidt said. “If I found people who fit the Coeur d’Alene mold, it was always an easier place to be.”