BRUCE REED ABOUT HIS PARENTS

When my parents, Scott and Mary Lou Reed, decided to settle down, they drove around the Pacific Northwest looking for the prettiest place to live. As soon as they saw Coeur d’Alene, they knew they had found the promised land. Together, they would spend the next 60 years preserving its beauty and making sure its leaders lived up to that promise.

Scott and Mary Lou had met growing up in southern Oregon, where they learned to ski at Crater Lake and learned to love every aspect of the great outdoors, even sagebrush. Before finding North Idaho, they did plenty of exploring. Scott studied history at Princeton and fought in the Korean War in Germany.

Mary Lou was first in her class at Mills College, then studied theology at Columbia in New York City. Scott went to Stanford Law School, yet he and Mary Lou were more intent on honing the skills to lead a good life — hiking, sailing, reading, chasing golden retrievers, and entertaining friends.

Today, few states are redder than Idaho. Yet back then, Idaho was a swing state. For the first half of the 20th century, Idaho was the nation's leading bellwether, supporting the winner in 14 straight presidential elections — seven times Republican, seven times Democrat. The state seemed a perfect fit for Mary Lou, a loyal Democrat, and Scott, a liberal Republican.

Coeur d’Alene was glad to have them. The town's four lawyers welcomed Scott, figuring another lawyer would mean more business for them all. Mary Lou was a boon to the local Democrats and every good cause in town. If their passions seemed eclectic, they shot skeet and subscribed to the Sunday New York Times - they were unbeatable company. Mary Lou threw the best dinner parties, and only once did Scott put plywood over the chimney to smoke out the guests so he could go to bed.

Just as they hoped, North Idaho turned out to be a perfect place to raise a family, meet lasting friends, and make a little trouble. Communities - like heroes - are made, not born. Scott and Mary Lou poured their hearts into making their new hometown stronger than they found it. They understood that if you really care about building community, you have to do it yourself

For six decades, Scott and Mary Lou did just that. Mary Lou was a born community organizer. My sister Tara and I were her first community. She had us stuff envelopes, knock on doors, hand out candy, and fliers at the Independence Day parade. Our house was always a campaign headquarters for something - the environment, mental health, the public schools. Our dinner table was a never-ending strategy session for local do­gooders. Our basement was like an underground railroad for co-conspirators from around the West. After college, I stopped coming home in election years because someone else was always staying in my room.

Tara and I grew up watching our parents stand up for principle against all odds and never lose heart. People thought they were tilting at windmills, but they stuck to it because they knew it was the right thing to do. They made quite a team: Scott fought for the environment in court; Mary Lou headed up a human rights education center to fight discrimination.

Many battles went on for decades. It took 40 years to save Tubbs Hill, the jewel in Coeur d'Alene's crown. Scott and Mary Lou never stopped loving their community. For them, there was no such thing as a lost cause, only battles not yet won.

These days, it is hard to imagine such steadfast generosity of spirit. Yet Scott and Mary Lou proved that if you love your neighbors long enough, eventually they'll come around. For a quarter century, Mary Lou ran other people's campaigns.

After my sister and I went off to college, she ran for office herself. She went door-to-door in every precinct and persuaded thousands of voters to elect her to the Idaho State Senate as a Democrat in the teeth of the 1984 Republican landslide, when Ronald Reagan carried the state nearly three to one. Even as Idaho got redder, she was re-elected five times. She rose to become Senate Minority Leader in the most Republican legislature in the country, with a caucus outnumbered 31 to 12.

Still, she persisted. Among other achievements, she led the successful fight for Idaho to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, finally expanded Medicaid to cover hospice care, and managed to unite Republicans and Democrats in declaring the cutthroat trout as Idaho's state fish.

A prolific writer, Mary Lou long recognized the importance of alternative weeklies; she and Scott often turned to be Nickels Worth to speak their truths. Yet she waited till her seventies to become a regular columnist. Writing on deadline can be a chore for anyone at any age, yet she was profoundly grateful to the Inlander for the opportunity.

Like everything else in her life, words became yet another community to organize.

Mary Lou used her columns to empower, entertain, and above all, enlighten. In her experience, reasonable people — and sometimes even unreasonable ones — can find common ground if they hear a lively, well-reasoned argument.

Al Gore once said a small town is the kind of place where people hear about it when you're born and care about it when you die. Scott and Mary Lou Reed would point out there's a lot of work to do in between. Their lives — and this book — prove a small town is the kind of place where people don't forget about it when you stand up for what you believe in.

Bruce Reed Washington, D.C. September 2019