20 Years Ago

From August, 1979 issues:

• Plans were in full swing for the annual Wagon Days celebration in Ketchum. Chairman Jerry Seiffert, Ketchum’s mayor, announced that Wayland Weddell of Lynden, Wash. had been contracted for the third consecutive year to bring a hitch of Belgian horses to pull the Big Hitch.

Wagon Days committee chairman were parade chairman Max Thompson, secretary and publicity chairman Don Rosebrock, treasurer Jed Gray, wagonmaster and entertainment chairman Richard Hart, barbecue chairman Gary Vinagre and Sunday events chairman Tim Gardiner.

• The city of Sun Valley collected three times more bed-and-drink taxes that the city of Ketchum during the month of June—reflecting a consistent pattern since local option taxes were first collected in the valley Dec. 15, 1978.

• Iconoclastic Ketchum police officer Don Mason, 34, turned in his badge number 13 and announced his retirement from the force after eight years of service. Friends planned a "graduation party" at Silver Creek Saloon in downtown Ketchum.

Mason was known for carrying his flower filigree handled gun while in uniform, and for wearing his white bow tie while in civilian clothes. He took to wearing a Sioux Falls Pork Products hat while he walked through the bars to try to prevent trouble before it happened. He formerly taught English at the University of Wyoming and worked as a Grand Teton Park ranger.

• Sun Valley Company is making more improvements on Baldy.

Phase Four snowmaking will provide artificial snow to the top of Baldy on College and Warm Springs Face. Both runs are heavily used during the opening weeks of the season.

• Headliners for the Sun Valley Ice Show were Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, favorites for the pairs skating gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics. General admission seating was $4 for adults and $2 children. Redwood Terrace seating was $5 per person.

• Monte Brothwell of Bellevue (31:19) and Tina McClanahan of Ketchum (39:58) were winners of the inaugural Mollie Scott Clinic 6.2-mile fun run along Trail Creek Road. A total 127 persons finished the 10-kilometer test.

• Forty-year Ketchum residents Wally and Lolly Lightfoot received a card from President Jimmy Carter on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary.

• The price of skiing has taken another jump.

Sun Valley Company’s entire rate proposal package was approved by Sawtooth Forest supervisor Paul Barker. The approval means that daily ski lift rates will be $16, half day $9 and discount rates $9.50 and $7.50 respectively.

• Greyhawk developer Paul Schuler, 56, was killed in a motorcycle accident in the Copper Basin about 34 miles northwest of Mackay. Schuler was founder of Greyhawk Development Co., the developer of International Village Condominiums and Greyhawk Village Condominiums at Warm Springs.

• A Ketchum citizen’s group complained to the city council that walking in the streets is unsafe and even dangerous. Ketchum City Council member Jack Corrock said, "You step off the curb, and you’re on your own. It’s frightening." A petition signed by 89 local residents asked the city to paint and maintain crosswalks on the main thoroughfares in the center of town and to provide pedestrian access on all downtown streets where no sidewalks now exist.

• Ketchum’s elusive black bear that has been dining famously in the dumpster near Warm Springs Restaurant has been caught.

At about midnight Monday, Ketchum police officers Rich Williams and Earl Peck scared the bear up a tree and kept her there until Idaho Department of Fish and Game officers Ted Chu and Lee Frost arrived with a tranquilizer gun.

They shot the bear with tranquilizer darts. Within 10-12 minutes, the bear fell out of the tree and dropped about 22 feet to a foam rubber pad placed below, which served to break the animal’s fall. The officers heaved her 250-pound body into the back of a pickup truck for a ride to the Baker Creek area.

• The unbeaten Ore House women’s slow-pitch softball team coached by Barry Luboviski and Bob Sarchett won the Ketchum Women’s Softball League city tournament championship 15-3 over Nedders Belles. Leading the Ore House were hitters Melinda Markey and Terry Tracy, and pitcher Lori Sarchett. In all, there were 15 women’s teams in the tournament.

League awards included Rocky Johnson as "Coach of the Year," Vern Thomas Plumbing as "Best Uniforms," Cathy Hill as "Most Valuable Fan," while Ned Bell and Carol Soucy captured the "Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson Award."

• More than 800 people signed a petition opposing Elkhorn’s proposed June Day Subdivision, unless the plans can be changed to protect an elk herd which winters in the area.

• Hailey Mayor Emory Dietrich has promised to review a temporary cab franchise awarded to Edward Penney one month ago. This week, the Hailey City Council heard complaints from customers and Taxi-Limo, a competing cab company. Loren Day, owner of Taxi-Limo, which also operates at the Hailey airport, told the council that several disputes between Penney and his drivers have been averted in the past weeks.It’s difficult to vote against God.

Nevertheless, the Blaine County Planning and Zoning Commission voted to deny a conditional use permit to a Seventh Day Adventist group. The group was seeking to build a 120-seat log church on the corner of Deer Creek Road and State Highway 75. Nearby residents objected to the church proposal, causing church member Phil Sisti to tell the commission, "I don’t know why people have objections to God’s home being anywhere."

• After months of informal negotiations, the Blaine County School Board and area senior citizens arrived at an agreement which will give the seniors a permanent home in the old Miner’s Hall in Hailey.

The building was given to the school district in 1959 by the miner’s union for the grand total of $1. Since, it has been used for classroom space and most recently for lunch storage. The board agreed to a 25-year lease for the senior citizens.

• During the second annual Northern Rockies Folk Festival held in the Ketchum and Sun Valley area, repairs were made on Ketchum’s 90-year-old Lewis Fast Freight Ore Wagons. Local blacksmith Tom Riney volunteered to do the work, with the advice and assistance of Ken Burrell. They reinforced the tire rims with bolts—in full view of passersby on the Sun Valley mall.

• For the first time, the Ketchum Rotary Club sent two local 16-year-old youngsters overseas as part of the Rotary International Youth Exchange program. Tammy Ehrmantraut of Bellevue and Terry Basolo of Hailey flew off to Finland. The Rotary Club footed the bill for $500 of the $953 round-trip air fare for each exchange student. They will also receive a $50 per month allowance while in Finland from the Rotary program.

• The School Board accepted the resignation of Ray Jefferson, a counselor at Wood River Junior High School in Hailey.

Jefferson retired from the school district after 28 years. In addition to his years as a classroom teacher, he spent 15 years as principal at Hemingway Elementary School in Ketchum, four years as junior high counselor, and five years as assistant superintendent of schools.

• Organizers staged a benefit jog-a-thon on behalf of Bellevue resident Rose Bergin, 19, a former Wood River High School track and cross country standout who recently underwent major surgery to treat a malignancy. Organizer Cindy Swaner estimated over $6,000 was pledged to the Rose Bergin Fund. About 80 joggers and walkers, ages eight to 78, went along tree-lined Broadford Road, raising money through pledges.

• Hailey City Councilman Bill House resigned his official duties in a letter to Hailey Mayor Emory Dietrich. House, who often voted in the minority on the council, said his job as local manager for Mountain Bell Telephone simply precluded him from devoting enough time to the council position.

• A provocative and kinky window display at the Avventura clothing store on Sun Valley Mall attracted plenty of attention and criticism—and caused some men to actually start browsing through the store.

The setting was a Hotel Grande motel room, with static flickering across a television screen and red satin sheets on the bed. A bondage book and sexual fantasy magazines were strewn across the covers with an empty box of amyl nitrate tablets and silk pajamas. The cardboard mannequin wore a black lace corset, bra and garter belt.

Window designer was Sheri Seggerman, a community photo instructor at the Sun Valley Center who had received a lot of artistic freedom from store owners Connie Maricich and Millie Wiggins in 18 months of creating the window displays. "The kinkier the windows were, the more they seemed to like them," said Seggerman about the store owners.

One anonymous critic, however, didn’t like the Hotel Grande window and scrawled "This window is disgusting…" across the window in red lipstick. A similar comment was slipped under the door of the store on a frayed cocktail napkin. Seggerman thought the lipstick comment actually added to the overall design, but Maricich and Wiggins elected to wash it off.

Sun Valley visitors won’t have to worry about the Avventura window displays much longer. The store will move to a new location on Leadville Avenue in Ketchum in the fall. And Seggerman is planning to leave the area and seek new horizons—possibly for Fredericks of Hollywood.