Gordon Shern Provided For Others For Many Years

Gordon Shern was in his late 70s when he started ballroom dancing.

He met Sylvia Russell - his companion for the rest of his life - in 1990. A year later, he suffered a heart attack. Two years ago, he learned he had cancer. Shern died July 17.

But with Russell by his side, family members say Shern made the most of his last decade.

“He spent so many years providing for other people,” said his daughter, Nona Kay Barclay, a Coeur d’Alene resident. “It was wonderful they had time to do what they wanted.”

Shern raised his two young daughters alone for two years when their mother died in 1950. Barclay remembers a series of housekeepers brought in to do the cooking and cleaning. She also remembers that her father fought to keep custody of his 5- and 8-year-old girls even though day care for a solo dad was nonexistent.

“He didn’t want to lose his wife and his kids, too,” Barclay said. “I was very glad my dad worked so hard to keep us together as a family.”

A carpenter by trade, he and his brother ran the Twin Echo Resort on Twin Lakes for nearly 20 years, serving a different crop of customers every week.

The resort, which they bought in 1945, was a gamble.

Gordon Shern was fresh off a job at the naval base at Farragut during World War II, supervising a truck crew. His older brother, Glenn, graduated from the University of Idaho in 1931 and worked for Boeing in Seattle.

The brothers decided to pool their money and buy a resort, work it for a few years, then sell it and rake in the profits.

They scoped out different sites before settling on Twin Lakes. They bought the “rocky, muddy, shallow” beach property for $3,000, Glenn Shern recalled.

The place needed work. The two hauled tons of sand to create a beach from the mess of rocks, and dredged out the mucky shallows.

Soon, though, 12 cabins ringed a big grassy center. Swimming docks coming off the beach were covered in canvas so the wood beneath was easy on the feet. Barefooted families wrapped themselves in towels and bought burgers and fries at Hamburger Heaven, the drive-in at the resort.

Gordon Shern had remarried in 1952, two years after he lost his first wife.

The brothers’ wives ran the restaurant, popping in from their usual positions at the grocery store. The brothers shared duties, each getting a day off every week. “It really worked out well,” Glenn’s wife, Elsa, said. “It was what Gordon and Glenn liked to do.”

The brothers sold the resort in 1968.

Gordon and Dorothy Shern golfed together often and traveled around the country. Dorothy died in 1990.

Shern also played saxophone and trombone in the Elks band in Coeur d’Alene.

He danced with Russell and the Crystal Chandeliers dance group in Spokane just a few days before he died.

At his funeral, many of the 150 people there were dancing partners from the Chandeliers.

“I know my dad would have said, `What are all these people doing here?”’ his daughter said. “He never assumed anybody thought him special.”