Good Neighbors: Their generosity overflows

There still are pockets of the Spokane Valley where, if you park your car with its windows down on a late summer day, someone will fill its front seat with zucchini – lots and lots of zucchini.

Contrary to rumor, that tradition did not start with Al and Marilyn Lacombe.

However, if you are fortunate to be one of their neighbors, you can expect to share in the bounty of their family garden – just one of the many reasons the Lacombes are Good Neighbors.

Al, an educator and administrator who retired from the West Valley School District in 1993, and Marilyn, a retired charge nurse, moved into the Spokane Valley in 1968. While raising four children, they have made their neighborhood a better place.

Autumn Reed, a neighbor for more than 30 years, is appreciative.

“They’re both in their 70s now, you know,” Reed said. “But when you go to their house for dinner, Al always insists on walking you home with his flashlight to make sure you get there safely.”

The couple’s children are all grown now, but Al and Marilyn are still proud regulars at school plays and classroom performances for children in their neighborhood, Reed said.

“They do a lot of volunteer work with their church and with Meals on Wheels,” Reed said.

And then there is that family garden.

“There was an empty lot behind us in the ‘60s and ‘70s and we farmed that,” Al Lacombe jokes. “We had four kids and the kids all worked out there.

“The people that owned the land were Harvey and Virginia Lewis, and they had Appleway Florists. We would plant whatever we thought we would need for both families, and then Harvey would bring in cases of tomatoes to plant and stuff like that. There was always a lot growing back there.”

There was one year when Marilyn canned 132 jars of pickles, he added.

“We used to send the kids around with cabbages, cauliflower, zucchini and what-have-you and had them hand them out to whoever wanted it,” he said.

The generosity didn’t stop there.

“The dog was restless one night and I got up with her and took her out – it was about 4 in the morning,” Al remembers. “She charged the back gate, snarling. Out of the tomato patch came this head. He saw me and he started running up toward 17th. I was yelling at him, ‘Come back, come back! We have more tomatoes than we can use!’

“But he didn’t.”

Al, who was principal at Centennial Middle School when he retired, is appreciative.

“I’ve had a great career here,” he said. “If you look at what a man can want in life, if you have a family that is devoted to you, good neighbors, if you have a career that allows you to touch people and enjoy them and see that your efforts are ratified, if you have a wife of 45 years and a marriage that’s lasted that long, and if you have friends scattered throughout this Valley, then you have had a life that most people just dream of.”

The Lacombes found so many good neighbors by being good neighbors themselves.

“Marilyn and Al are the epitome of kind, caring, helpful and dedicated good neighbors,” Reed wrote in a letter to The Spokesman-Review. “We feel honored to be counted as their friends.”