In Business, Location Is Everything
Opportunity woos John Haehl like a half-off sale draws buyers. That’s why the head of Lewis-Clark State College’s business school is in Coeur d’Alene.
“There’s a vibrant business community here,” he says, spreading his large hands on his desk as if that’s where the action is. “I need to be in closer touch with what’s going on.”
John is no stodgy pedagogue, despite his tortoise-shell eyeglasses. His high energy needs a constant outlet, which he did not find in slow-growing Lewiston.
When he first interviewed for a teaching job at LCSC two years ago, John felt Coeur d’Alene’s speeding pulse 90 miles away.
“I thought we ought to establish a presence here rather than be seen as a nice little night school program,” he says.
For a year, John ran the business division from Lewiston with constant trips to the school’s hungry Coeur d’Alene center. Coeur d’Alene thrived under the attention.
The 11 business courses offered in Coeur d’Alene in 1992 grew to 20 by last year. Enrollment jumped to 100 - one-third of LCSC’s total business school enrollment.
John decided Coeur d’Alene needed a second teacher and volunteered for the job, eager to leave administration. But his boss instead suggested John administer the whole division from Coeur d’Alene and commute periodically to Lewiston.
John studied his mileage, considered his wife’s allergies, persuaded his boss to allow him to teach one class and happily agreed to the move.
He moved into LCSC’s windowless storeroom in Coeur d’Alene last week. He laughs at the bare beige walls and stuffy air.
“I don’t need a window,” he says. “I’ll be out of the office most of the time.”
He’ll be shaking hands and listening, plotting which direction to take LCSC’s programs in the next few years, finding jobs for his graduates, building his Kidd Island Bay home.
“A business program should mirror the community,” John says. “You can’t do it from a distance.”
Parent perk
Television’s bright spotlight focused on Wallace’s Kathryn Kane last week. Kathryn was one of four inventive mothers on “The Mike and Mattie Show.” It’s a talk show, not a cartoon.
Kathryn designed card games and other tools for parents to use to teach their children acceptable behavior. She markets them from her home. The show wanted mothers of invention and got Kathyrn’s name from “The Mommy Times,” a magazine.
Kathryn was on camera with cookie-mogul Mrs. Fields, anti-cookie aerobics superwoman Kathy Smith and Cosby wunderkind Raven Simone.
Friday the 13th
Superstition’s scariest day doesn’t frighten the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council. The council will unveil its haunted house complete with ghosts and ghouls in the Kootenai County Fairgrounds’ grandstand next Friday the 13th.
Local performers volunteer for this project to make it as scary and real as it gets. The house opens at 7 p.m. Wear garlic.
No generation gap
Hayden Lake’s Lois-Lee and William Lehrer celebrated 50 years of marriage last month. That’s quite a feat, but Lois-Lee is just following family tradition.
Her parents, Lelia and Frank Meister, celebrated their 50th in 1974 and her grandparents, Augusta and Azroe Whitlock, marked 50 in 1947. It must be in the genes.
What’s the favorite love story in your family? Tug at my heart strings. Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
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