Capt. Corky carries on

COEUR d'ALENE — A new journey is getting underway.

After 50 years piloting boats on Lake Coeur d’Alene, Captain Corky Meyer, 75, is retiring.

Meyer held a Commercial Captain’s License from 1971 through May of this year, working for Duane Hagadone as a private ship captain for 30 of them. And that was just his part-time job.

Meyer is also a Vietnam veteran, and retired from a 30-year career in the chemical laboratory at Kaiser Aluminum.

Meyer’s family homesteaded in Rathdrum, where his father still resides.

Meyer started boating young.

“When I was 14 years old, I bought my first car, here in Coeur d’Alene,” Meyer said. “And I bought a boat.”

A commercial captain’s license gives authority to operate passenger vessels up to 100 tons, year round. A vessel that size holds around 400 passengers.

Just getting a license takes a lot of work.

“It was very extensive,” Meyer said. “They do everything, even going back to celestial navigation, to marlinship, which is tying knots, to navigational lights … engines of boats, how they work propulsion. There’s a lot of parts of the test.”

The testing process takes about three days, including a class 2 physical. Candidates must have a clean record and good health.

Every five years the license must be renewed.

Craig Brosenne, president of the Hagadone Marine Group, has been acquainted with Meyer for the past 24 years.

“He’s been on the lake for 50 years," Brosenne said. “He is the ultimate in professionalism, with a personality that makes people smile.”

When Duane Hagadone began building The Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course in 1990, Meyer was recruited to ferry guests to and from the resort and golf course, as well as many of Hagadone's personal guests.

Meyer owned a vintage wooden boat for 30 years.

“The Angel Baby was my baby,” he said.

Named after the 1950s song by Rosie and the Originals, his boat was featured as the centerfold in Classic Boating Magazine. Eventually sold to a gentleman in New Zealand, she was, for a second time, spotlighted in the magazine.

Searching for a way to commemorate retirement, Meyer decided to get a tattoo. He explained that after his years serving in Vietnam and his work in the maritime industry, he’d never gotten one.

Meyer chose to use a bird’s-eye view of Lake Coeur d’Alene for the piece.

“It hurt like a son-of-a-gun,” Meyer told The Press. “That was the first and last one.”

Though he plans to take it easy in retirement, Meyer has no plans to slow down.

He told The Press, “I still snow ski, I still bicycle, I still walk Tubbs Hill 5 miles a day.”

“I’ve never had weekends off, my whole life,” Meyer added.

Well, it's about time.