Former Idaho lawmaker dies at 71

BOISE – Merle Parsley, who died last weekend at age 71 and will be remembered in a Boise memorial service today, was a former Bonner County state senator and Sandpoint High School history teacher who once was nicknamed the “governor of Northern Idaho.”

Parsley was a colorful fixture of North Idaho’s political scene in the 1960s and ‘70s, before he moved to Boise in 1976 and became a state official.

“He had a great zest for life – he had a lot of fun wherever he was,” said Marianne Love, a Sandpoint author and retired teacher. Love said when she taught next door to Parsley’s class, she had to close her classroom door – because Parsley’s passionate, oratorical style flowed right out of his classroom, and she wanted to make sure “my kids could hear me instead of Mr. Parsley.”

Perhaps Parsley’s most notorious moment on the North Idaho political scene came when he got into a fistfight with the late Ron Rankin, a political foe, outside the 1966 state Democratic Party convention in Coeur d’Alene.

Rankin remembered the clash one way, Parsley another. But both agreed that after Parsley caught Rankin posting late-night fliers maligning a Democratic candidate for governor, Parsley gave the much larger Rankin a bloody nose and Rankin knocked Parsley down. Rankin then filed assault charges, which didn’t stick.

Just this May, Parsley recalled the incident in a letter to The Spokesman-Review’s D.F. Oliveria and wrote that after his punch, Rankin’s “nose exploded like a smashed tomato.”

Monica Beaudoin, a retired Sandpoint teacher, state legislator, and president of the Idaho Education Association, said, “I like to remember him as a classroom teacher that did a lot of instilling in kids up here how to be a good citizen. He did his job well.”

Love said, “He was very dynamic. I wouldn’t say that he exactly lit up a room, but he came pretty close. He was a person that had a lot of charisma, a lot of sincerity, and very friendly, very approachable.”

Parsley, a North Dakota native, moved to North Idaho with his wife, Judy, after he completed service with the Air Force in 1961, during which he was stationed in Formosa. The couple spent their honeymoon operating a lookout tower for the U.S. Forest Service.

The Parsleys settled in Hope, and he worked as a high school history teacher, a school bus driver and a real estate agent. A Democrat, he was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1964 and to the state Senate in 1966, where he served one term.

His family recalled that his House seatmate, John Quinn, described him as “a drop of water on a hot skillet – lots of sound and action, but not much getting done.” But they said his record showed otherwise, including his sponsorship of legislation making the star garnet Idaho’s state gem and requiring a PKU infant blood test for every child born in the state, a requirement that still stands today.

“He and Cecil (Andrus) were good friends, and when Cecil was governor, my father would be the main contact for him up there,” recalled Parsley’s son Bob, who now lives in Boise. “We just moved back and forth from Sandpoint to Boise all the time. … He was very active in the political scene.”

Parsley and his family moved to Boise in 1976, where Andrus, then U.S. Secretary of the Interior, appointed him to a post with the Pacific Northwest Regional Commission. He served as special assistant to Democratic Gov. John Evans from 1981 to 1984, and then was named manager of the State Insurance Fund, a position he held for more than a decade until his retirement.

After he retired, Parsley owned and raced horses, was involved in several small business ventures and traveled extensively.

Parsley is survived by his wife, Judy; a sister and two brothers, including brother Darrel of Sandpoint; four sons and a daughter; seven grandchildren; and nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting donations to the Idaho Humane Society.

Arrangements are under the direction of Cloverdale Funeral Home.