Good neighbors: Family treasures Ericksons’ welcome

Nanci Ice and her daughter moved into their Glenrose neighborhood before her belongings, husband and another daughter made it to Spokane.

They didn’t know a soul, they didn’t have any furniture, and they didn’t know where the grocery stores were.

Just when they couldn’t feel any lonelier, there was a knock on their door.

Fran and Margaret Erickson stood at their door and told them that they knew the family was new to town and wanted to take them to dinner and show them around.

“I have never been so grateful to anyone in my life,” Ice said in an e-mail. Ice’s daughter, Nicole Altmaier, was so impressed with the Erickson’s neighborliness she called her best friend to tell her about it.

The Ericksons moved into the neighborhood 20 years ago. The living-room window of their hilltop house looks out to their neighbors’ front yards, and they can see if anyone needs help with taking in their garbage cans or shoveling the walks.

They are modest when it comes to talking about being a good neighbor. They feel that everyone who lives around them is a great neighbor.

“It’s a wonderful neighborhood,” Fran said.

Margaret said that being a good neighbor is all about caring and sharing.

“You don’t have to think about it; you just do it,” Fran said.

He said that there are three neighbors who have tractors to plow the roads and driveways when it snows.

They try to see who can make it to the roads first on snowy mornings.

“We just do it because it’s a different kind of therapy,” he said.

One neighbor walks up and down the streets looking for garbage to pick up.

Another throws an apple-pressing party every fall.

But the Ericksons are special to the Ice family.

Before the Ices moved in, Fran mowed their lawn. He also fixed the broken sprinkler system.

Nanci Ice, who came from a neighborhood where no one spoke to each other or knew their neighbors, found the neighborhood’s camaraderie refreshing.

“I never saw that before,” she said. “Here I know every one of my neighbors.”

The Ericksons drive their SUV out to Green Bluff and fill it with fruit for the neighborhood. When they visit the coast, they haul 800 pounds of blueberries home.

They keep some for themselves but give away the majority. The berries usually come back to them as jam.

Fran, who owns his own woodworking company, The Wooden Touch, saves his wood shavings for one neighbor with a rabbit.

The Ericksons have been married for nearly 30 years and have four children, six grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Margaret said the grandchildren are always doing things to make them feel special.

The kids write them letters and draw pictures for them that the two cherish.

Over the past year, Margaret has been battling cancer. She’s undergone chemotherapy and other treatments for the disease, but the two still manage to look out for the others in the Glenrose neighborhood.

“I’m feeling much better,” she said. “The people here make it hard to feel bad.”

The two received a lot of support and good wishes from their neighbors. To thank them, Fran and Margaret held a New Year’s Day dinner for five other couples.

Two weeks later, Margaret held a luncheon for 15 members of the Glenrose Women’s Club, a group in which she and Ice are involved.

Ice said that now that she knows what a good neighbor is, it has inspired her to be a good neighbor, too.

“I’m never moving,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”