Ted Gryde kind man who loved North Idaho

Theodore “Ted” Gryde was a quiet immigrant from California, one whom most of us never really got to know.

Oh, if you’re a fisherman, you might have spotted him on Hauser or Hayden lakes. Or if you golf at Ponderosa Springs or the Coeur d’Alene public course, you might have followed his foursome.

But in fact, few locals noted his passing when, on Jan. 24, he died of lung cancer in his Coeur d’Alene home at the age of 92.

That’s because for most of his 13 years here Ted didn’t get deeply involved in our community. He was busy at home, helping take care of his mother-in-law.

However, a couple of neighbors and the Hospice staff who tended to him in his last months recall his sense of humor, his gentleness, his kindness and his love of North Idaho, this land he adopted when he moved here from Los Angeles in 1991.

Ted was born in 1912 in Waldville, Saskatchewan, the first of eight children. Two years earlier, his parents had migrated from North Dakota for some Canadian homestead land. But in 1916, they bought a general store, then sold it the following year to get into the hardware business.

Seeing more opportunity back in the States, they moved to Southern California in 1922. Ted graduated from grammar school there and entered high school, where one of the highlights, his sister Rodna Seig says, was marching with his high school ROTC band in the Pasadena Rose Parade.

But in the 11th grade he was forced to drop out.

“Dad had developed blood poisoning,” recalls his sister, who still lives in Los Angeles. “Ted went to work in a gas station. It was the Depression, and our family needed the money.”

Like many young men in the ‘30s, Ted worked wherever he could find a job. That included stints in two hardware stores, on a tuna boat and for a lighting company.

That lighting job took him to the major Hollywood studios, where he operated klieg lights and searchlights for movie premiers.

Rodna recalls that, for the premier of the motion picture “King Kong,” Ted dressed in a gorilla suit and stood before a searchlight that projected his fearsome shadow onto the Roosevelt Hotel.

“He was always a protective big brother,” Rodna remembers. “He’d wait up until all six of us sisters were home from our dates.”

Ted married in his late 20s and fathered Ronald, now 64 and living in El Paso. But he and his first wife divorced after 25 years of marriage.

During World War II, he was the lead man in an ammunition plant. He was called up twice to serve in the military but was deferred both times because of the importance of his job.

In 1966, Ted married Fran Wright Dale, also divorced, the mother of a boy and a girl.

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with a man again,” she says. “But Ted caught me in a weak moment, when I was scrubbing floors. He asked me out to a baseball game, and the rest is history.”

Ted was an accomplished trombonist, playing in polka and dance bands until late in life. He also was a Mason, and he worked through the chairs to become master of his Southern California lodge.

He wound up his career as a hardware salesman, retiring at age 62. The Grydes then moved to Desert Hot Springs, where they lived until their final move. That was to Coeur d’Alene so they could be near Fran’s daughter and son-in-law, Connie and Wade Newsom, who were then living in Post Falls.

Fran’s mother, Helen Wright, who lived with them here, sufferd from emphysema, asthma and congestive heart failure. Ted dropped virtually all outside activities to help Fran care for her until she died in 2001.

Fran says Ted loved working in their yard. “In fact, he took the end off one of his fingers when he stuck his hand into the mower. But he was pretty calm about it. Just came in and said, ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’ “

Van Hardy, who moved two houses away from the Grydes in 1992, recalls driving by days before moving into his home.

“I’ll tell you what kind of a neighbor he was,” recalls Hardy. “The first time I saw him, my house was still in escrow. Ted didn’t even know me, but there he was, pulling weeds in my front yard. We later went fishing together.”

Another neighbor, Wayne Bajadali, says Ted “always had positive things to say, always had a smile on his face. He was a real good neighbor. I really miss him.”