The candy sounds of Coeur d’Alene summer didn’t die four months ago with Chris Guggemos.
They will continue with a fourth-generation Native son who has drummed his way all over the world.
Michael Koep, 53, of the favored local band The Rub, is lining up sponsors to underwrite the free summer time concert events in Coeur d’Alene and Hayden that Chris launched three decades ago.
“At the tip of the day,” Koep advised Huckleberries, “He was lighting the torch every summer, and we want to maintain that lit.”
Koep has the gravitas — and love of community — for his filling-big-shoes summer gig.
He has traveled the world as the drummer for bands Kite and Manito. And performed 80 to 100 shows annually for 15 years in the Inland Northwest as part of The Rub with Cristopher Lucas and Cary Beare.
He has fenced an Italian grasp and co-founded the North Idaho Fencing Consortium.
He has written the Newirth Mythology, an award-winning fantasy trilogy that’s being adapted for a television sequence. And helped launch the Riverstone Summer Concert Series as a board member of the Coeur d’Alene Culture and Arts Alliance.
He has climbed the pyramids of Giza and blasted a drum solo over large speakers across the DMZ at North Korea. And was a counselor for the University of Idaho. And waited tables at Beverly’s and Woody McEvers’ old downtown Rustler’s Roost.
“I wager Woody would nonetheless let me wait tables if I requested him,” Koep quipped.
All this, and he remains firmly rooted in his hometown, a swashbuckling musician/writer/poet who lives with partner Sheree and 14-year-old son Michael in the Garden District, where he can hear downtown music “however faint on the breeze during the summertime.”
Said Koep: “Those shows are what makes Coeur d’Alene special — Live After 5, Art on the Green, and the (Handshake Production) concert events. Music on the road is the heartbeat of downtown Coeur d’Alene.”
Koep shares Chris’ imaginative and prescient to offer local musicians a chance to perform before a cross section of the town. And he plans to supply a similar mixture of music — jazz, blues, rock, nation, with a sampling of bluegrass added in.
The expertise is there. The love of group is there. The respect for the legacy left by Chris Guggemos is there. Now all that’s needed is the bucks.
Michael shall be signing bands and fundraising within the months forward. He needs businesses and sponsors to dig a little deeper because the value of producing reveals has gone up. Along with the platinum, silver and gold tiers of sponsorship from years previous, he’ll add the “Guggemos” tier for top givers.
Above all, he will honor Chris’ memory with a concert at City Park this summer time, as the bands play on.
We love ‘Little Red’
Fort Sherman Chapel within the Fort Grounds has turn into such a half of our historical past that no one would think of relocating it now. But 75 years ago, we got here this near losing it — to Spokane of all places.
Fort George Wright in the West Hills of Spokane was “anxious” to buy and move the beloved “Little Red Chapel,” based on a narrative in The Press on Jan. 28, 1948. But its owner, Coeur d’Alene’s Athletic Round Table (ART), was just as anxious to maneuver it to a suitable location — in Lake City.
Max Rowlins, ART’s president at the time, mentioned Coeur d’Alene residents could be dissatisfied to have the historic landmark lost to town. What an understatement.
The chapel was the community’s first church, library and college. At one time, it carried the title of “cradle of Coeur d’Alene’s education,” in accordance with the outdated Press story.
In early 1943, ART, under the management of President S.C. Sanderson, purchased the constructing from Fort Ground Lutheran Church. And held it in belief until 1984 when the civic group, before dissolving, gave the historic structure to the Museum of North Idaho.
And that’s how ART saved our beloved “Little Red Chapel” from the Fort Wright ambush.
Joy in Lake City
The release and reunion of Fred McMurray, an Air Force captain from Coeur d’Alene who was shot down by the North Vietnamese in Sept. 12, 1972, has been mentioned right here before. But on this day, 50 years in the past, an exclamation point was added to the heart-warming story.
On Jan. 29, 1973, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported the elation felt by McMurray’s wife, Judy, her three kids, and the community upon learning that her husband was protected and about to be launched from a prisoner of struggle camp.
“I’m so happy, nevertheless it actually hasn’t sunk in but,” Judy advised The Press.
Two days earlier than, an officer from Fairchild Air Force Base had driven to Coeur d’Alene to deliver the joyous information that came after the beginning of a cease-fire in the Vietnam War.
“Now, I wish to share my happiness with all people in town,” Judy said. “I am overjoyed, however I still really feel sorrow for my pals whose husbands are also lacking and who don’t know the place they are.”
Fred and Judy now reside in Hayden.
Huckleberries
• Poet’s Corner: So gray it is outside the car/it’s exhausting to say just the place you would possibly be,/could be Post Falls or could be Prague —/but a minimum of you’ll by no means shovel fog — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“In Winter Fog”).
• Yesterdays: Ten years ago (Jan. 27, 2013), CdA college trustee Brent Regan repeated a racial joke at a public discussion board, evaluating President Obama to an assault rifle. Caught heck. Ap-hollow-gized. And was defended by Mary Souza “as a very smart conservative” who was being focused by the academics union and The Press. Now, Brent and Mary are on the outs. Times they have a-changed.
• Dave Scates, Cd’A police chief from 1988 to 2001, confirms he’s the 12-year-old, with sister, Peggy, and the primary buttercup of 1963 in that Press picture (Huckleberries, Jan. 22). And there’s more. His 4-year-old sister was the one who discovered the flower. However, Dave, happily retired, pleaded the Fifth when requested if he shared the $1 reward from The Press for that first buttercup.
• Original owner Bill Jones refused to check with his Sunset Bowling Center as an “alley.” He felt that sobriquet to be equivalent to such “low-rent nomenclature” as “pool halls” and “truck stops.” He made that time 40 years in the past whereas unveiling plans for his proposed $1.7 million heart. And Rhonda Ellis of Post Falls recalls being yelled at by a supervisor, at age 9, for calling it an “alley.”
Parting Shot
In January 1993, over three days, John Brumley, then principal at Coeur d’Alene High, scored a trifecta. At age 40, he was named Idaho’s best secondary principal. And employed to begin out a yet-unnamed new faculty in town (Lake City High, which opened in 1994). And received a $70 pair of sun shades as a door prize. Thirty years ago at present, John informed The Press how onerous it will be to depart CHS, the place he’d been principal since 1989. “If I reduce my arm, I would bleed blue,” John told The Press. Now quick forward to March 2010 when a Press story told of John’s upcoming retirement at age 57. The headline? “You can call him Mr. T-Wolf.” Seems John had undergone a blood transfusion throughout his 16 years at LCHS and was bleeding silver and teal.
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You can contact D.F. “Dave” Oliveria at [email protected]
