One of George Goetzman’s best memories growing up in Coeur d’Alene is riding his bike with his best friend on the last day of school to Memorial Field with 35 cents in his pocket.

“Back then, that was plenty of money to screw around on for a day or two,” he said. Like soft drinks and doughnuts. “It was the most important thing we could imagine in life.”

That was in the late-1950s when Goetzman was 10 and about to be inducted at a young age into his father’s popular business. He swept, cleaned and hauled trash from the Goetzman Studio in downtown Coeur d’Alene above what was then Wilson’s Drug at Fourth Street and Sherman Avenue. But he also began learning the trade.

“He taught me the darkroom stuff. I did real orders. I made people’s pictures,” Goetzman said. “At the time it wasn’t anything but a job. It wasn’t like I was being groomed to be his replacement.”

But that’s precisely where it was going. Goetzman not only inherited the business, but revitalized it to a point where it was almost unmanageable. For decades, Goetzman Photography was an institution in Coeur d’Alene.

“By the late ’70s I realized I had created a monster,” said the 69-year-old father of four and grandfather of six/Ric Clarke, Coeur d'Alene Press. More here.

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