Closures rock Cd'A schools

The news resounded like a thunderclap for Coeur d’Alene’s Roman Catholic families.

On March 6, 1971, Sister Superior M. Mariel announced that the Immaculate Heart of Mary would close its three local schools in June.

Gone would be the IHM Academy’s vaunted high school, with its academic and athletic excellence, as well as grade schools at St. Pius X and St. Thomas churches.

The declaration also stunned the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Faced with a possible increase of 700-plus students, President Robert DeArmond of the Coeur d’Alene School Board said, “We were fearful of that decision.”

Due to a teaching shortage, the IHM assembly in Pennsylvania moved sisters serving in western schools to ones in the East. In vain, Sister Muriel appealed the decision in person.

For 70 years, IHM nuns taught the three Rs — and instilled religious values and discipline — to generations of Catholic children.

At an all-school reunion in 2000, Josephine Roche, 83, Class of 1933, told The Press about a close encounter with a riled sister: “I was giggling and talking too much. The nuns made me stand in front of the class. Another boy and I stood there for hours. I was humiliated.”

Said Spokane dentist Jim O’Connell, whose Class of 1960 helped organize the reunion, “The sisters of IHM really provided us with a moral compass, and 40 years later, we are still carrying it with us. Not that we are all Catholic, but we have the same sense of values.”

At IHM Academy, it was not uncommon for a group of students to stay together from first grade to high school graduation. Said alum Kathy Montgomery before the 2000 reunion, “It was like going to school with a bunch of brothers and sisters.”

The IHM Panthers of the 1960s fielded strong sports teams, coached by Gene Boyle. The boys' basketball teams won consecutive state 4A titles in 1967 and 1968. And the football team won 33 straight games over four undefeated seasons before losing to Lakeland High.

Decades later, historian Robert Singletary, a former Lakeland High teacher, remembered the slogan before the big game with IHM on Sept. 21, 1968: “Shut the door at 34.”

The IHM Academy high school and nunnery were originally housed on Indiana Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets in the former hospital and opera buildings from Fort Sherman.

After the closure, the school district leased — and later bought — the IHM property. And it transformed replacement buildings into the Sorensen School and administrative offices.

Follow Your Art

Today, public art by Terry Lee is all around the town, starting with five sculptures of Mudgy Moose and Millie Mouse on or near the waterfront.

But 30 years ago, Terry was a budding, middle-aged artist, fresh from San Diego, with an eye for zoo animals. In mid-February 1996, he entered large paintings of elephants, rhinos and beach scenes in the Spokane Western Art Show.

A reporter for The Press called Terry “a bit of a misfit.”

The annual art show featured precise scenes of elk, ducks, grizzlies, cowboys and American Indians. Terry enjoyed art that was big, colorful and a little blurry.”

“I don’t do high detail,” Terry told reporter John Firehammer. “I think it’s boring to the viewer. But the people who really like outdoor art want to see every hair painted.”

Terry studied art at Brigham Young University. But he drifted into business afterward. He owned a sporting goods store before returning to his first love.

In San Diego, he photographed animals as reference material for his early paintings.

With his future uncertain in early 1996, Terry told The Press: “This is what I want to do. Even if I have to live in Mexico in a Volkswagen van, I’ll do it.”

Scaredy Cat

Blaze was Public Enemy No. 1 in Post Falls back in the days when the fire department rescued cats from trees.

The 8-month-old pussycat knew how to scale trees but not how to climb back down them.

As a result, Post Falls firefighters received two calls to save the cat. After the second rescue, however, Division Chief Dan Ryan told pet owner Kristen Herbert not to phone again until her feline was treed for three days.

“We’re here to help the people as much as we can, so it’s not a nuisance type thing,” the fire official told The Press on March 8, 2001.

But Blaze wasn’t finished wandering.

Kristin and her family rescued him, without an SOS call, when he was stranded a third time.

Then, there was a fourth incident.

Blaze cried for four days when he trapped himself 60 feet up a pine. Kristen was too embarrassed to call the fire department. So, she rang Shawn Bennett of Grace Tree Service, who fetched the repeat offender.

When The Press last checked on Blaze, he was under house arrest, bowed but unrepentant.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: This tiny plant must conquer fear/to bloom before the springtime’s here,/for the snows of March that sometimes cloak us/will frost your pistil if you’re a crocus — Bard of Sherman Avenue (“The Courage of the Crocus in Northern States.”)

• Hot Shot: You may know that Greg Crimp coached North Idaho College women’s basketball teams to a fine 368-194 record over 21 years. And that Greg owned the old Sports Cellar on Sherman. But do you know that Greg won the town’s Fourth Annual Hoop Shoot Contest, sponsored by The Press? On March 1, 1961, as a seventh-grader, Greg canned 18 of 25 free throws in the finals to claim first place.

• All Fall Down: For decades, the Great Northern railroad depot stood at what is now the Independence Point parking lot. It was built in about 1903 for the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane Railway Co., and served thousands of passengers weekly before the advent of automobile travel. Jim Chase's workers bulldozed the property on Valentine’s Day 1966.

• What, Me Worry? The cold winter of 2000-01 hit the beef industry hard, driving up prices. Grocery stores, restaurants and consumers panicked as meat prices hit a record $3.21 per pound. But at Hudson’s Hamburgers, it was business as usual. At his grill, Steve Hudson dismissed the hysteria and said, “We haven’t heard about it.” He then went back to flipping mouth-watering burgers that made Hudson's famous.

Parting Shot

Pennies are going the way of CDs and yellow pages now. But 25 years ago, they were key to a major cancer fundraiser at Lakes Middle School.

On March 2, 2001, the school and cancer survivors celebrated the $15,000 raised by its 700 students since the start of the year — or 1.5 million pennies in all.

The students marched around the gym with banners that read: “Cancer Kills, but Pennies Heal” and “Stomp Out Cancer with Cold Hard Copper.”

Organizer Dave Eubanks, a Spanish teacher, told the assembly, “Cancer is not someone else’s problem. It’s our problem.”

And that message still echoes today.

• • •

D.F. (Dave) Oliveria can be contacted at [email protected].

    Sister Avellina, the IHM principal in 1964, lobs a football to Coach Gene Boyle and cheerleaders (kneeling, from left) Jane Lauf, Kathleen McMurray and Barb Whiteley, and (standing from left) Linda Larsen and Ann Matson.
  

    Artist Terry Lee poses with his interpretive paintings in 1996.
  

    Baylie Miller, 2, plays with Blaze, her cousin’s tree-climbing cat, in 2001.

    Red Halpern, Coeur d’Alene’s parks and rec director, presents seventh-grader Greg Crimp with a trophy for winning a free-throw competition in 1961.

    A worker bulldozes the Great Northern railroad station in 1966.
  

    In 2001, as he flips burgers, Steve Hudson is unconcerned about rising meat prices.
  

    Cancer survivor Anna Bunde sits among students, parents and other survivors at a 2001 Lakes Middle School Cancer Awareness Assembly.