HUCKLEBERRIES: Ramsey Road recollection, a motor sled and women in charge

Successful candidates often say they plan to “hit the ground running.”

Al Hassell, the late Coeur d’Alene mayor, did just that in 1994 when he proposed, won voter approval for, and expanded Ramsey Road into a four-lane street in less than nine months.

A quiet but effective leader, Mayor Al used his first State of the City address a week after taking office to introduce a $9 million bond to rebuild sections of three substandard roads: Ramsey, Government Way, and East Sherman Avenue.

The new mayor was racing the clock in his push for funding to reconstruct Ramsey Road from Appleway to Hanley Avenue: Lake City High was due to open in fall 1994.

Election Day was set for Feb. 1.

Mayor Al, city administrator Ken Thompson, finance director John Austin and city officials ran a picture-perfect campaign during the next three weeks in support of the bond, which required two-thirds voter approval. And they had done their homework.

In 1993, the final year of Mayor Ray Stone’s second term, the city had quietly acquired rights of way in preparation for the Ramsey Road reconstruction. The two-lane “goat trail” that was Ramsey Road in those days worried Mayor Stone.

He feared how dangerous Ramsey Road would be with an additional 1,200-plus more students, teachers, parents and school buses.

It isn’t easy to pass a bond in tax-resistant Kootenai County. But the cost to taxpayers for the 1994 measure was irresistible: Zero. Mayor Al’s bean counters planned to use franchise fees from utility companies and Cablevision as well as state gas tax revenue to pay for the upgrades.

“There’s no trick here,” Mayor Al said in his State of the City speech at the Chamber of Commerce Upbeat Breakfast. “It’s a situation where we already have the money coming in.”

City officials spent $6,000 on an information blitz that included more than 30 presentations, 5,000 door hangers and 2,000 telephone calls.

And residents responded with 83% approval.

Four years later, however, voters turned Mayor Al out.

He lost by 67 votes to 20-something Steve Judy, who outspent him 13-to-1. Judy capitalized on community anger over the cancellation of the 1997 fall Leafest. Never mind that the city was hamstrung after the county refused to accept fallen leaves at the landfill that year.

And that said more about the fickleness of voters than the quality of Al's public service.

Need for speed

Almost 90 years ago, legendary Fred Murphy crafted a snow machine that flew across frozen Lake Coeur d’Alene at speeds up to 60 mph. His homemade “motor sled” cost only $2.50 for parts; he already had the 10-horsepower engine to power it.

The fuselage was made of white pine covered with canvas, the runners of steel. Fred carved the propeller from a two-by-six piece of white pine.

In January 1979, Coeur d’Alene Press reporter Robert Frank asked Murphy about his “motor sled.”

Necessity had been the mother of his invention.

In 1935, Fred was the caretaker for a Casco Bay neighbor’s summer home. And he needed a way to get across the icy lake to buy groceries and pick up mail for lakeshore friends and himself.

He once made the trip from Casco Bay to downtown Coeur d’Alene in 90 seconds.

He had a simple explanation when asked why he didn’t copyright his idea: “People just weren’t ready for anything like that back then.”

Trailblazer

On Jan. 20, 2004, Wendy Carpenter broke through her final glass ceiling when she became the first female police chief of Coeur d’Alene. Before that, she had been the CDA PD’s first female sergeant, first lieutenant and first captain.

Of her promotion, then-mayor Sandi Bloem said, “It was not a tough choice.”

Chief Carpenter had run the department on an interim basis since the previous Sept. 4.

In an interview upon her retirement three-plus years later, I asked Chief Carpenter if it had been difficult to be a female cop. She replied: “No. The biggest difference is at the end of the day I go in the women’s locker room and the men go in the men’s locker room.”

At the time of her promotion, Coeur d’Alene was run — and run well — by women. Sandi was mayor. Wendy Gabriel was the city administrator. Priscilla Bell was interim NIC president. And Sue Thilo represented the area on the state Board of Education.

Coeur d'Alene was well-served with these community-minded women.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: I can recall warm summer days/of great beauty seen but rarely;/I can recall warm summer days,/but at this point barely — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Memories in Late Winter”).

• Buttercup: The Press once awarded a dollar to the first child who brought a buttercup to the newspaper office. In January 1974, that honor went to Lisa Dunton, 10, who found the flower on Potlatch Hill, now part of The Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course. Only Lisa called the hill “Canary Mountain” because, she said, the birds on it looked like canaries.

• Winter Race: The Diamond Cup name wasn’t limited to hydroplanes. In 1969, some applied “Diamond Cup” to the second Coeur d’Alene Snowmobile Races at the fairgrounds. And there was an actual snowmobile race tour. As an added attraction that second year of the races, Miss Coeur d’Alene Linda Dreschel challenged the media to a race for bragging rights.

• Just a Poke: The mere mention of vaccines today riles some. But, in January 1964, CHS basketballers gladly rolled up their sleeves to get inoculated against measles. Player Jim Hand had contracted measles during a game against Post Falls. And that put a following contest against Sandpoint in jeopardy. But there was no general outbreak. And no game cancellations.

• Wise Words: The Cove Bowl on East Sherman Avenue is long gone. But the life philosophy of employee Loretta Richards remains true today. By 1994, Loretta had worked for 30 years for the alley when she and her work ethic were featured in The Press. She said: “When you work for somebody else, you work as if it belongs to you. You just don’t work like it’s a job.” Bingo.

• Remembering: Brent “Jake” Jacobson, a decorated USFS officer, who was gunned down Jan. 12, 1989, in the snowy woods near Dover. He’d tracked brothers Joseph and James Pratt there after their botched home invasion. Jake left behind wife Barbara and two children. The killers were serving life sentences for first-degree murder when they won parole in 2021 over the strong objections of the Bonner County prosecutor. So much for justice served.

Parting shot

In 2002, Tom Wobker, a stockbroker for Pennaluna & Co. on Sherman Avenue, began submitting short rhymes for this Huckleberries column, then published in The Spokesman-Review. That started a collaboration and friendship until Tom’s death in 2016. His poems, published anonymously under the pseudonym, The Bard of Sherman Avenue, were an instant hit. Tom wrote of many things: North Idaho weather, bureaucrats, gardening, local politicians, pigeons, Nazis. Many guessed Tom’s identity. But no one guessed correctly. It was only in his last months that Tom finally took a well-deserved public bow for gracing us with his whimsical rhyme. The poems you see in this column now, almost eight years after his death, prove that much of Tom’s work is timeless.

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D.F. (Dave) Oliveria can be contacted at dfo@cdapress.com.

    In January 1994, the Coeur d’Alene Press endorsed the $9 million street bond.
  

    Fred Murphy, right, and a Casco Bay neighbor are shown with Fred's “motor sled."
  

    In January 1974, Lisa Dunton, 10, showed off the first buttercup.
  

    In January 1969, Miss Coeur d’Alene Linda Dreschel challenged the media to a snowmobile race.
  

    In January 1964, Dr. “Ted” Fox pretended to inoculate a spot-marked basketball against measles as CHS Viks Bob Pegg, left, and Don Barnes watched.
  

    When this January 1994 photo was taken, employee Loretta Richards had been a fixture at the old Cove Bowl for 30 years.
  

    In 2013, fallen USFS officer Brent “Jake” Jacobson was featured in a memorial outside the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office.
  

    Pennaluna & Co. stockbrokers Tom Wobker, right, and Tim Major in January 2004. Tom would gain local fame as The Bard of Sherman Avenue.