Time and words span decades

Thirty years ago this week I penned my first newspaper column in the Post Falls Tribune. I’d spent nearly five years as an account executive at the Coeur d’Alene Press when I was promoted to General Manager/Publisher of Hagadone Communications’ weekly Tribune.

In 1990 the column was titled Post Scripts and focused on issues and people of the growing community with a population of approximately 7,000. In 1996 when I left to become the first Executive Director/CEO of the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce, I continued to pen the column that then appeared weekly in the Coeur d’Alene Press under the new name Main Street.

I was wooed away to the Spokesman Review by Dave Oliveria as a community columnist, which lasted for a year or so. No small bit of irony that in 2020 Dave and I now publish weekly columns once again for the same paper, this time the Coeur d’Alene Press.

There was a brief hiatus until I received a phone call in the fall of 2001 from then-brand new managing editor Mike Patrick asking if I’d be interested in returning to the pages of the Coeur d’Alene Press. We agreed to the terms of the contract and the rest is history.

I estimate I’ve written over a million column words since October 1990 and wished a happy birthday to a few thousand locals. Looking back three decades from when I wrote the column in longhand on legal pads to the technology that exists today, it’s amazing. It’s also a source of personal pride that I’ve never missed a deadline.

While I file weekly columns electronically now, I do so from a computer that rests on the same desk that was once in the Tribune publisher’s office. When the century-old newspaper closed a few years after I’d gone to the Chamber, the company gifted me with my old desk and credenza.

This year I’ve begun to compile excerpts from three decades of column observations of life in Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County to publish a book in 2021. I will definitely include a page in the book that features 30 years of evolving hairstyles as evidenced by the column “bugs” that have appeared in print.

As I peruse bound editions of the Tribune at the Post Falls Library I’m struck by the fact that while much has changed over time, so much is the same. People are still passionate, giving, unpredictable and opinionated … and interesting.

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Happy birthday today to Nancy Harlocker (89!), Midge Smock, Vicki Gehring, Mark Michalak and Erin Paisley. Tomorrow Pat McGaughey, Dale Bennett, Craig Hampton, Suzanne DeTar, Laurie Rumore, Joel Elgee, Barbara Baltzell, Chris Nicastro, Josh Hissong and Jeff Hill toast the anniversary of their birth. Randy Wells, Kathy Epstein, Greg Luraski, Lyn Harris, and Ron Deering take another trip around the sun on Friday. 10/10 birthdays belong to Jim Hamby, Bill Everson, Nancy Kosonen, Jessica Moore, Steve Fitzhugh, Lori Gravelle, Bob Cox, Allan Knight, Lynn Jackson, Mollie Sommers, Marlea Kruger and Mike Way. On Sunday Michael Pereira, Chris Pasquale, Greg Worley, Genie Riegert, Chad Anderson, Cindy Odd and Warren Anglin blow out the birthday candles. Happy birthday on Monday to Tom Elliott, Jeff Yates, Donnie Murrell, Alan Brown, Kathy Getchius, Kirk Hjeltness and McKade Brown. Tuesday celebrants are Jeff Johnson, Margaret Eddings, Derek Scharf, Serena Pratt, Kathy Pierce and Judy Bennett.

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email mainstreet@cdapress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kerrithoreson.