Bayview Memorial Grows
The man who recently strummed his guitar in Bayview’s Memorial Garden has no idea how happy he made Linda Hackbarth.
“The garden’s not used a whole lot,” Linda says, as she settles herself at a picnic table under a ponderosa pine. “But we just had our first request for a wedding.”
The year-old garden replaces a weedy 100-foot by 200-foot lot just west of the Bayview Community Center. It’s a testament to the scenic settlement’s spirit, tenacity and closeness.
The garden was grown to honor Marilyn Jenkins. She died March 8, 1999, after 20 years in Bayview. She and her husband, Hobart, helped plan, build and landscape the community center.
Townspeople decided a garden was a fitting tribute to their friend. Memorials for Marilyn, plus a grant, raised $16,000 for the project.
Linda took charge. She’s a retired physical education teacher and knew how to assign tasks. She found people with backhoes and tractors to clear weeds and level the land.
“People joked that I knew everyone with a backhoe,” she says.
Linda wasn’t plant savvy, but she read, asked questions and toured area gardens. She took advantage of giveaways at Panhandle nurseries. When someone told her she could have the old schoolhouse bell, Linda seized the opportunity.
The bell had disappeared in the 1950s.
“People knew who had it, but wouldn’t say,” Linda says, flicking a yellow jacket out of her white hair. “One day, someone left me the bell inside the community center.”
A bricklayer built a round platform for the bell with bricks from the stately old Bayview Hotel, which was demolished.
The final part of the project, a rose-granite memorial wall, slipped into place last winter. Marilyn’s name tops the growing list of dead loved ones. Families pay $250 to add a name. The money goes into an endowment fund for the garden’s care.
Summer gnats are the garden’s most common visitor now. They flit over the cement bench near the cedar and fir picnic shelter, along the gravel paths and under the rectangular arbor.
Deer visit too. They munch on the red champagne cocktail roses and scarlet dianthus in the raised flower beds.
Linda can’t resist plucking stray weeds as she wanders past the trickling rock pond and over a wooden bridge to Marilyn’s blue garden. Fabric liners beneath the dirt stop most weeds, but a few manage to share bed space with blue forget-me-nots, columbine and delphiniums.
“I see concerts here someday,” Linda says, waving as Deb Gentry strolls into the garden. Deb rips a dandelion from her path then drifts toward the pastel flower bed.
“It’s more established in one year than I thought it would be.”
Bedside best
Few North Idaho doctors apparently have won their patients’ hearts, based on the number of readers who called in to praise their physicians. Only three Coeur d’Alene docs earned rave reviews: Randil Clark at North Idaho Urology, James Curtis at Kootenai Surgery Associates and Thomas Neal at Ironwood Family Practice.
Dr. Clark is conscientious and caring, says one of his patients. The patient has had some uncomfortable treatments and prefers to keep her name to herself. But, “I tell everyone we know about him,” she says.
Meda Scott says Dr. Curtis is “sweet, nice, kind, interested in his patients, very professional and has a fun sense of humor.” Beat that.
Lorraine Owens says Dr. Neal sent her flowers after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. He stopped by her house to visit her several times. “He’s a neat, neat young doctor,” Lorraine says.