Mae Mceuen: ‘Grand Lady Of Little Leagues’
It’s no wonder Coeur d’Alene city officials named a baseball playfield after Mae McEuen.
“I always wanted to be on her team because you got free pop,” says Steve Anthony. He leads the city’s recreation programs now, but 35 years ago he was just another baseball-crazed peewee leaguer.
Most people over 40 who grew up in Coeur d’Alene know of Mae, the mother of Lake City’s boys and girls baseball programs. They have emotional ties to the neatly manicured fields that fringe Tubbs Hill.
Mae gave them memories and laughs, satisfaction and pride. After she died of cancer in 1964 at age 61, everyone recognized the fitting tribute: pinning her name to the ballfields that had sprung up from her dedication.
“People now don’t give her credit for opposing the development down there that we defeated. But she was very involved,” says Art Manley. He and Mae worked together to build playfields rather than a shopping center on the old mill site.
The year Mae joined the Parks and Recreation Commission, she spearheaded the drive to start boys baseball. It was 1957 and enough boys to fill 40 teams showed up. Two years later, 900 boys turned out for 56 teams. Youth baseball was a hit - and Mae made sure everyone could play.
“She was one of those people who would give a little guy a mitt if he didn’t have one,” says Doris Frensdorf, Mae’s niece.
“Every kid wanted to be on her team,” says Bruce Miller, who began in peewees and later fielded offers from pro teams. He ended up in Vietnam instead. “She was the grand lady of the little leagues.”
Mae and her husband, Virgil, ran McEuen’s IGA on 12th Street and Sherman Avenue. Generosity was their top product, from hot dogs for the team they sponsored to help for anyone who needed it.
“The McEuens pulled a lot of people through a lot of hard times during the mill days,” says Ralph Jerome. Mae allowed Jerome’s family to buy groceries on credit after his stepfather was laid off from the Ohio Match Mill in 1957.
“I don’t know what we would’ve done without her,” says Ralph’s mother, Dolores Huseby.
Plump, and grandmotherly to everyone, Mae poured so much time and energy into her community that she won state and national citations and generations of loyal fans.
“She was just there and so jolly and so happy,” Bruce says. “It’s too bad somebody isn’t there today to take it and run with it the way she did. Everyone today’s too busy.”
All gobbled up
Good work, North Idaho. So many people called North Idaho College’s Gene LeRoy to invite foreign students to Thanksgiving feasts that Gene ran out of students. People called from Sandpoint, Post Falls, Coeur d’Alene, Hayden, Hayden Lake and Pinehurst. If you missed out, book soon for next year.
Light up
Christmas hits loud and bright in downtown Coeur d’Alene tonight and no one should miss it. Everything in the dinnertime parade on Sherman and Lakeside avenues glitters with lights.
Kootenai Medical Center’s Festival of Trees opens in the Coeur d’Alene Resort at 5:30 p.m. Go see the lavishly decorated trees, listen to music and eat. Or go to the senior social at 10 a.m. Saturday or Family Day, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday.
It’s worth the dollar or two admission just to hear the oohs and ahs.
Holiday houses
Where are those overzealously decorated homes where Christmas lights and displays leave you gaping in awe? Point them out early and regularly to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
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