Grieving the loss of an exemplary officer

Tonisha Mooring Kendall recalls the 2002 newspaper photo of Greg Moore and her.

She was a Lake City High student sitting in a 1995 Saturn she’d won in Parker Toyota’s “Pays to Get A’s” drawing. Officer Moore was checking the car’s exhaust noise with a decibel meter.

The Coeur d’Alene Police Department had offered the decibel demo at the school to draw attention to the noise crackdown planned for downtown Coeur d’Alene that summer. The Press published the photo and a story about the emphasis patrol on the front page under the headline: “Shake Down.”

But Tonisha wasn’t in trouble although her friends, including future husband Tim Kendall, had added a glass-pack muffler to make the Saturn “cooler.” Officer Moore assured the teen that her car noise didn’t exceed legal levels.

Tonisha and LCHS schoolmates were fond of Officer Moore, who was a school resource officer at the beginning of his 16-year CPD career. He would die in the line of duty on May 5, 2015, and be immortalized by the K27 Memorial built in his honor at McEuen Park.

“He was the light and peace in our school,” Tonisha told Huckleberries. “He befriended so many students. Literally, you could come to him with anything. His presence in the school was known by all.”

Tonisha and her husband graduated in 2003.

Whenever the calendar reaches Cinco de Mayo, their thoughts turn to Sgt. Moore.

Said Tonisha: “Our community grieves the loss of a great man still today.”

Louie, Louie

You Are Truly An Old-Timer If — you know the original name of Paul Bunyan Restaurant on Northwest Boulevard: Louie’s In and Out.

Original owners Louis and Mildred Ormesher were banking on the Paul Bunyan theme 70 years ago in March when they opened, according to a 2002 Press story. They figured correctly that a 30-foot metal lumberjack and a Paul Bunyan Burger on the menu would pull motorists off the highway.

At the time, Highway 10 ran through downtown and included today’s Northwest Boulevard. Teenagers cruising downtown would make a loop with Louie’s on the west end and the Boat Drive Inn on the east.

The locals always referred to the restaurant as Paul Bunyan. But the name didn’t officially change until the early 1960s. By then, the Ormeshers had sold the restaurant to their son, Gary, and his wife, Carol. The younger Ormeshers ran Paul Bunyan for 20 years before selling it to Bob Ovnicek, a long-ago former employee who was an overworked route manager for Coca-Cola at the time.

In 1997, Bob reconstructed the building to add inside seating and reconfigured the drive-through. But the menu remained, and remains, basically the same — juicy burgers and a variety of shakes and fries.

In May 2002, Bob told a Press reporter: “You don’t want to kill a good thing.”

Bigger fish to fry

C.C. Shepherd’s world record for biggest rainbow trout caught lasted only seven months. Last week, Huckleberries reported that the Opportunity, Wash., fisherman pulled a 36-pound rainbow from Lake Pend Oreille on May 1, 1947, the opening day of Kamloops season. And the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce sent it to President Harry Truman for dinner. Now, reader Betty Hamlet Davis notes that her father, Wes Hamlet, landed a 37-pound rainbow on Nov. 25, 1947. And it may have been bigger yet. Seems Betty’s pop and his fishing partner, Art Moen, didn’t consider the rainbow to be much larger than 25 pounds. So they kept fishing. The monster in their boat probably lost a pound or two before it was weighed. Others have caught bigger rainbow trout since. But for record purposes the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Wisconsin has rejected most if not all of them as being genetically modified. In the end, the Hamlet rainbow became a feast for Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: For hours on end/I searched my cranium/to find a rhyme/for his geranium — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Ode to Mr. Hagadone’s Favorite Flower”).

• Overheard (at a recent garage sale on Hayden’s Maple Street): Customer, holding a hand out, palm up, to catch the pouring rain: “Nice day for a garage sale.” Homeowner: “Well, at least it isn’t snowing.” Second Customer: “Now, there’s a proper North Idaho outlook.”

• Has It Really Been 25 Years Since — Idaho congresswoman Helen Chenoweth excused North Idaho’s lack of diversity with her infamous words: “The warm-climate community just hasn’t found the colder climate that attractive.” Never mind that neo-Nazis regularly marched on Sherman in those days. After human-rights activists pounced, Chenoweth ap-hollow-gized.

• Pecky Cox of Priest Lake put out a single feeder to welcome hummingbirds home — only to come up empty for days. Finally, she gave up and took the feeder in for cleaning. P’haps the holes are clogged, she thought. Or p’haps she’d used salt instead of sugar in the formula.

• The late Scott Reed didn’t fret when the Freedom Tree was leveled to launch the McEuen Park overhaul, according to Sandy Emerson. After all, Art Manley, Roger Young, and he had helped plant it in the 1960s to stop a proposed shopping center at the south end of Fourth Street. “I’m glad it’s gone,” Scott would say. “It did its job. There’s no shopping center, and we have a park.”

Parting Shot

• Darrell and Patty Kerby were driving around a curve on a Bonners Ferry street when a dog rushed off a porch and straight for their car — only to be stopped abruptly at the end of its leash. Noting the path worn in the lawn, Darrell commented to Patty that the dog’s instincts must continuously overwhelm its brain. Without missing a beat, Patty responded, “It must be male.”

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D.F. “Dave” Oliveria can be contacted at dfo@cdapress.com.