HUCKLEBERRIES: Just roll with it

Matt Roetter has come a long way since his days as a “skateboard evangelist.”

At 69, the Hayden City Council president is considered the nation’s top forensic expert in court cases involving windows, doors and skylights. He owns Roetter’s Windows and Doors and serves on the boards of Hayden’s urban renewal agency and sewer district.

In 1977, however, he and Kelly Walton, his University of Idaho roommate, were unmarried young men eking out a living by making and selling skateboards on the edge of City Park.

Matt, then 21, made the boards, and his charismatic partner, then 20, attracted users.

“Kelly was a cool Californian, cool like Woody is,” Matt told Huckleberries, referring to Coeur d’Alene Mayor Woody McEvers, a former California surfer and skate fan.

The partners bought the old Beehive Restaurant, between City Park and Memorial Field, because it was affordable. After renovating the building, they lived in the back. To make money for fast-food startup costs, Kelly hawked $100 worth of coffee and popcorn on a cold day at Memorial Field.

The only other specialty skateboard business in Idaho at the time was in Boise.

For a Coeur d’Alene Press story Aug. 5, 1977, the partners said that just two or three kids were riding skateboards when they arrived the previous spring. By late summer, that number, they said, had swelled to 60 or 70.

New skateboard fanatics socialized at the yellow-and-white concrete Beehive, practicing tricks at a nearby City Park slab, playing foosball and pinball, and snacking on fast food: hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, chips, candy, sno-cones and pop.

Matt specialized in custom-built skateboards, including upscale ones that sold for $60 to $110 (or, in today’s dollars, between $315 and $579). But, thanks to Matt and Kelly, whom The Press labeled “skateboard evangelists,” the sport had grown so much in such a short time in town that they had sold out of upper-end boards by late summer.

Skateboarding, of course, isn’t a year-round sport in seasonal North Idaho.

Ultimately, the friends served as best men in each other’s weddings one week apart, sold their building, which became the Lakeside Bistro for a time, and went different ways. Kelly helped launch Idaho’s first skate park in Boise and now sells real estate. A certified ski-binding mechanic, Matt turned his interest to cross-country skiing.

A late bloomer, Matt later found his niche selling and analyzing windows and doors.

Housing slump

The late Jimmy Carter was beloved for his humanitarian work as an ex-president. But his presidency (1977-81) was another thing. In 1980, the North Idaho Building Contractors Association blamed Carter for an inflation rate that averaged 10.9% and crippled the housing market. In protest, April 9, 1980, local builders staged a downtown parade of more than 50 cars, led by a hearse with a sign that read: “The Death of Housing.” The Press compared the parade to a funeral procession. To emphasize the target of their anger, the former peanut farmer in the White House, local builders also hanged a peanut in effigy. NIBCA president Roy Stark told a crowd at the Coeur d’Alene mall parking lot: “We have a major crisis on our hands, and it’s up to us to let the government know we are good and mad.” Words to live by then — and now.

Labor Day?

National Take Your Daughter to Work Day was on the spring horizon in 1993 when Melissa Williams did so — in an unorthodox way. Melissa, an obstetrics nurse at Kootenai Medical Center (Kootenai Health), began her usual 12-hour shift at 7 p.m. Friday, March 31, 1995, tending to newborns and their mothers. And then hopped into bed when she finished her work. You see, she’d had contractions for days, and her baby was on the way. Three hours and 24 minutes later, Melissa gave birth to Tess Elisabeth Williams, weighing 7 pounds 4 ounces and measuring 19.5 inches. “She went to work as a nurse and ended up being a patient,” said happy grandmother Betty Williams. The third annual Take Your Daughter to Work Day occurred 21 days later. And continues to be observed on the fourth Thursday of April.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: Enclosed for you herewith you’ll see/some dollars that once lodged with me./I send them each year without fail/so you won’t throw my ass in jail — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Dear Taxperson”).

• All Wet: Today, Terry Lee is admired for his artwork, including the Army Soldier at McEuen Park and the Mudgy & Millie collection. But 45 years ago, he was all wet, literally. On April 10, 1980, as owner of Lee’s Outfitters and a scuba instructor, he was teaching 18 local firemen and cops how to conduct water rescues.

• Historic Paper: On April 15, 1965, Mrs. William J. Miller, of 1150 Seventh St., showed The Press the rarest of old newspapers. She had found it among her parents’ belongings. Printed on that date exactly 100 years before, an old New York Herald, outlined with thick black lines, reported on the death of President Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Williams’s parents were living in New York at the time of the assassination.

• Breaking Ground: The first shovel of dirt was turned for John Stone’s 73-acre Riverstone project Monday, April 10, 2000. Jack Beebe of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty estimated that the total valuation for Riverstone would exceed $200 million. Predicted Jack accurately: “It’s going to be a monumental change to our downtown.”

Parting shot

On April 11, 2000, Enaville Resort owner Joe Peak and three buddies biked along a busy Silver Valley arterial to confront opponents at a rails-to-trails hearing. Joe, then 53, was miffed at naysayers who banded together under the name of Citizens Against Rails to Trails. Opponents offered some of the same baseless gripes that North Idaho Centennial Trail foes had used in the early 1990s. The rails-to-trails project, they groused, would attract vandals and trespassers. And, they claimed, the route was lined with mining contamination. Blah, blah, blah. An avid biker, Joe knew how dangerous Silver Valley roads were for bicyclists. At the time, he organized bike “Hump Day (Wednesday) rides” for safety-in-numbers purposes. Joe and common sense prevailed. The 72-mile Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes from Mullan to Plummer was built. And remains wildly popular.

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

    Matt Roetter, then 21, builds a skateboard in 1977.
  

    Kelly Walton, 20, center, demonstrates a skateboard maneuver called the “catamaran” in 1977, with Greg Clark, left, and Ken Moretz.
  

    Dave Finkle and Evalyn Adams stand by a hearse before a 1980 protest parade.
  

    Melissa Williams is shown with her baby, Tess Elisabeth, born April 1, 1995.
  

    Terry Lee taught scuba diving in 1980 before turning to art.
  

    Mrs. William Miller with an 1865 copy of The New York Herald.
  

    On Aug. 27, 2019, John Stone posed for a photo at The Village at Riverstone after he and his partners sold the mixed-use development.
  

    Joe Peak, right, and Larry Halley ride bikes to support a rails-to-trails project.