After A Full Life, She Returns To Her First Love At Age 42

This year’s students can make or break Lori Blessing.

“You can tell she’s a first-year teacher,” says Betsy Cord, sizing Lori up with ruthless candor. Betsy is a junior in Lori’s Coeur d’Alene High School nutrition class. “She doesn’t know students, how we act. But she’s catching on.”

So much for Lori, who told her students on the first day of school that they couldn’t fool her because she had teenagers at home.

Lori at 42 is as idealistic as most new teachers. But she can match any teenager for wisecracks, and laughs at life with a longshoreman’s gusto.

She knew she would teach from the time she entered college in 1971. But money, marriage and children complicated her life, and school fell by the wayside. Working for her accountant husband drove her back to college a few years ago.

“The pay was lousy,” she says with a smile.

Last May, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in family and consumer science education. By September, she had landed a job as Coeur d’Alene High’s home economics teacher - a good position for a woman determined to reform the world.

“I think there are too many people who don’t care,” she says. “If I can open that caring part of people, I’d be happy.”

She began her reformation movement with a trip to the food bank, where students collected the agency’s allotment for a family of five.

The kids’ job was to make the food last a week. They had to find recipes for such delicacies as texturized vegetable protein and moose meat, then gave their menu-stretchers to the food bank for clients.

This spring, Lori’s students will do mending for nursing home residents as part of their sewing lesson.

After four months on the job, Lori is sure she’ll make it. Her students, some grudgingly, agree.

“I took this because I wanted an easy class,” says Kimberly Nelson with a frown. “But she makes it hard. She makes us think…and that’s good.”

The End

The start of 1995 brought the end of an organization dedicated to peace and safety. CAN WE (Citizens Against Nuclear Extermination and Weapons) helped crack, so to speak, secrets in the nuclear weapons industry.

It brought together Coeur d’Alene people whose health problems most likely stemmed from radioactive releases from Hanford.

CAN WE stalwart Gertie Hanson says the group just ran out of energy after 11 years. But that’s no reason to stop individual efforts, she says.

Here are some of Gertie’s pleas for

Attend public meetings on Hanford and the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab.

Make sure congressional representatives know clean-up activities are important.

What’s In A Name?

Looking for a unique name for your son or daughter? It’ll be hard to top these: Coldiron , Leviathan or Sir for boys and Cyx, Chryseis and Haven for girls. Idaho’s Center for Vital Statistics plucked those names from 1993 birth certificates. Honest.

Don’t Hurt Me

If you’re smart, you’ll welcome Kathy Huff to town. She’s Klub Kristi’s new karate instructor and wears a black belt. She’ll teach tots as well as adults.

Remember the dance, gymnastic, piano, karate, baton, etc., lessons your parents put you through in their quest to find your “talent”? I hated the lessons. But I have to admit, I did thank my parents when I was 30, just as they said I would.

What do you thank your parents for now that you hated as a kid? Send your confessions to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128. It’s not too late to say thanks.