New Centerpiece Bayview’s Meeting Place A True Product Of The Community

Six T’s, four E’s, two B’s, two A’s and an L.

Hobart Jenkins frowned at the Bayview Community Center sign. He’d run out of letters halfway through his announcement of Saturday’s storyteller.

To the rescue came Jim Campbell, keeper of the nearby chamber of commerce reader board; he loaned Jenkins about 20 of the plastic letters. Then both men stood back to admire the sign.

So it’s been with the Bayview Community Center since the beginning. Volunteers, scrounged materials, grants and bargainbasement furniture have transformed a vacant lot into a $400,000 community building.

Tonight, the U.S. Forest Service is presenting one of its National Rural Community Assistance Awards to the Bayview Community Center Foundation. The award is one of 19 the Forest Service is giving out nationwide this year.

“It’s a very significant award,” said Dave Wright, supervisor of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

“These were folks who, in our opinion, took the bull by the horns,” said Wright, who nominated them for the award. “They chased the funding, and when the opportunity came, they made it happen.”

Previously, Bayview’s only public meeting place was a 1910 schoolhouse, which last housed students in 1944. The building - which some had wanted to save - was condemned, boarded up and burned for firefighting practice seven years ago.

With the loss of the old school, Bayview’s community groups drifted away - or apart. The local women’s club began meeting in Athol. The Bayview Chapel, a congregation without a church, went to Careywood.

The chamber began meeting in restaurants or in a conference room at the nearby U.S. Navy base.

Finally, Chuck Waller donated half an acre for a community center. The search for money, labor and materials was on.

A Pocatello architect, a friend of a board member’s friend, volunteered to draw up plans for half his normal fee.

So the group could get a mortgage, 75 locals pledged annual payments ranging from $20 to $300 for the next decade.

Others brought their old tractors and backhoes.

Combat engineers from the Army Reserve came with bulldozers, loaders and dump trucks to smooth the site and dig a foundation.

The U.S. Forest Service donated $23,000. The U.S. Department of Commerce contributed $142,000.

Wood and plastic pipes came from local mills, at cost or free of charge. Local plumbers and electricians donated their time. Kootenai County Commissioner Dick Compton bought the center a large refrigerator.

All told, about 50 Bayview residents - one-sixth of the town’s population - hammered nails, shoveled dirt and spread paint.

Volunteers scrambled to get the kitchen counters finished before fishing season began.

“It’s just unbelievable what people will do for you on something like this,” said Waller, now the foundation’s vice president.

“It’s just the nature of the town and the people who live here,” said Jenkins.

Bayview’s postmaster donated a microwave; Waller bought another at an auction. Jenkins bought 100 chairs from a bankrupt business school in Spokane. A woman donated $500 to install a phone.

Although groups have been meeting in the center for nearly a year now, the foundation doesn’t consider the center quite finished. Windows still need shades, and the building needs a sound system. A garden club is coming back in the spring to landscape the grounds.

But the community groups that drifted away in 1988 have returned.

A line-dancing club rents the building, as does an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter. The local water board meets there. So do homeowners associations.

On Sunday, Jenkins and Waller looked around the building and pronounced it good.

“Everyone under the sun donated something,” said Jenkins.

“We even got a guy who said he’d plow the parking lot when it snows.”

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