COEUR d'ALENE - C. Wayne Knudtsen, a car dealer and civic leader with "a heart bigger than a Suburban," died at his home Friday night. He was 87.

"This man had a real passion for our community," said Duane B. Hagadone, one of Knudtsen's longest-running friends and business associates. "Boy, he was available to help any way he could.

"He helped save the Chamber of Commerce in 1962. He was then instrumental in the formation of United Way, and he was very active in the development and growth of the hospital and the college. I would give him tremendous credit for contributing to the overall quality of Coeur d'Alene today."

Doug Parker, whom Knudtsen took on as his partner in starting a Toyota dealership in Coeur d'Alene in 1983, summed up his friend this way:

"He was just a superb member of the community. The Scouts were always huge with Wayne, and many, many, many other public endeavors. He had a heart bigger than a Suburban."

C. Wayne Knudtsen was born Sept. 18, 1927 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Ida Maude and Clifford E. Knudtsen. On June 12, 1939, Wayne's father and his uncle - also named Wayne - bought the Chevy dealership on Fourth Street and Coeur d'Alene Avenue from W.Z. Cooper.

Young Wayne couldn't wait to get started.

"The business was pretty small in those days," said Eve Knudtsen, Wayne's daughter and, since October 1995, Knudtsen Chevrolet's official dealer. "Everybody did a little bit of everything. It truly was a family business. . . In the dealership they had gas pumps. Dad used to pump gas when he was 13, 14 years old."

The family faced a big challenge shortly after purchasing the dealership: World War II broke out.

"They weren't building any new cars, so that's when the family turned to used cars to see them through the war years," Eve said.

Wayne went on to graduate from Coeur d'Alene High School in 1945. He immediately enlisted in the U.S. Navy, Eve said, finished basic training and was eagerly awaiting orders to be shipped out from Bremerton, Wash.

"They shipped him to Athol, Idaho," Eve said with a chuckle. Though likely disappointed, Wayne was in charge of ship's stores at Farragut Naval Base and helped in the facility's post-war closure. Still, that service would assist him a couple decades later.

In 1950, Wayne earned a degree in business from the University of Idaho. While there, he met his future wife, Polly, who moved to Coeur d'Alene to teach high school English and married Wayne in September 1951. By then, Wayne was digging deep into the family dealership.

"We had wreckers back in the day, so he drove the wrecker, and he did lubes, oils, and filters, and he cleaned cars coming out of the body shop," Eve said. "And he sold cars; he did it all."

It was on that car sales lot that two of the biggest names in Coeur d'Alene history crossed paths.

"The first time I met Wayne Knudtsen was when I was a young kid of 20 years of age - 62 years ago," Hagadone said. "I was selling classified ads for the Coeur d'Alene Press and he was working at the Knudtsen Chevrolet dealership down on Fourth Street. He was in charge of used cars. There was a little lot, a dirt lot, and he worked out of a tiny shack. I called on him and started selling him classified ads for used cars. That's how our relationship started, and it became strong and we remained good friends through his entire life."

In fact, Hagadone said, they developed nicknames for each other: "I called him Knute and he called me Hag. That's all we went by for 50 years," Hagadone said with a laugh.

After his father suffered a stroke in the early '50s, Wayne took charge and, in 1955, was appointed dealer by Chevrolet Motor Division. That's a title he held for 40 years until Eve assumed the store's reins, although Wayne still was the owner, she said.

From that small lot on Fourth and Coeur d'Alene, Knudtsen Chevrolet moved a few blocks north in 1966 to Fourth and Spruce, then again in 2002 to its large facility in Post Falls.

As a child, Eve said she actually spent more time at the dealership with her grandfather - Gramps - who would do service follow-ups, address cards to customers and supply his granddaughter with a seemingly endless supply of Chicklets gum.

"What I do remember about my dad, though, is every morning, six days a week, he left at 7:30 and every night at 6 o'clock he came home. And on Sundays he either laid on the couch and watched football or, during the summer, he went out to the Hayden Lake Country Club and golfed. And then we went out on the boat every Sunday afternoon in the summer."

Wayne Knudtsen did love golf - and he was pretty good at it. Eve thinks his handicap hovered around 7 and reached a more than respectable 2. But even there, belonging to something wasn't enough. In 1974 Wayne became president of the club, where the manager was a young man named John Goedde.

Told Saturday of Knudtsen's death, Goedde, now a state senator, said he never had the privilege of playing golf with Wayne, but he heard plenty of stories.

"In one word I think people would describe his golf game as 'intense,'" he said.

Goedde also said the family's loss is a huge loss for the community.

"He worked for the benefit of the community for many years," he said. "It's a family legacy married to the community."

That marriage, for Wayne, included salvaging United Way of Kootenai County. According to Eve and others, the nonprofit had gone belly-up before two civic stalwarts - her father and Duane Hagadone - took it upon themselves to save it. Through their fundraising and giving, the foundation was built for a strong organization today.

Hagadone said Wayne Knudtsen's fundraising abilities were extraordinary, crediting his friend with helping double the revenue of a struggling Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce in 1962 and '63. Knudtsen was only warming up.

In 1965, Kootenai Hospital District sought its first and only general obligation bond, asking voters for $1.6 million to build a new hospital.

"Dad and [local attorney] Scott Reed went door to door to get out the vote for the bond," Eve said.

The bond passed, but Knudtsen - an early hospital foundation president - was far from done leaving a large, positive footprint on his community. Ultimately, much of his attention came down to the region's children.

"Dad had a real passion for the Boy Scouts," Eve said. "He finally had to stop being a scout master because he was becoming too emotionally attached to the boys. So he went from being scout master to being very involved with the council, and very involved with the World Jamboree in 1969."

The Jamboree was to be held at Farragut, the former naval base and now a state park. But there was a problem, right up Knudtsen's alley.

"They had to get hold of Dad when they were planning it because they knew there were munitions buried up there, but nobody knew where they were buried," Eve said. "Dad did."

During his working career, Knudtsen twice served as president of the Idaho Automobile Dealers Association and in 1986 was Idaho's nominee for Time magazine's Quality Dealer of the Year Award - an honor that his daughter received exactly 20 years later.

In 1993, Wayne Knudtsen was named Citizen of the Year by the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce, but he was always the top citizen to his children.

"I was so proud of him," said Eve, 51. "I really, really looked up to my dad."

Never more so than in 2002, when the dealership made its big move to Post Falls.

"The first offices that got moved were my dad's and my offices," she said. "Dad and I spent a whole day there putting our offices together, with no one around except workmen. The sun was shining and Dad came in and sat down at the desk across from me. He said, 'You know, I haven't been sleeping very well because I've been so worried about this move.' He looked at me and said, 'But you know, I think this was the right move.'

"I laugh because he had no trouble from that point on sleeping through the night, and I haven't slept a wink."

Eve's brother, Eric, shared two fond memories of his father.

When he was 10 or 11 years old, Eric played golf with Wayne - but it wasn't the golfing that meant so much to him.

"He'd let me drive the golf cart and I thought I was big time, driving the golf cart around," said Eric, 48. "But the story that resonates with me is the time I took him to a car auction with me."

Because Wayne hadn't planned to attend the auction in the early 2000s, he had to go to the front counter to get an auction pass.

"I watched him as he walked in. The number of people who all of a sudden saw his presence - they immediately forgot whatever they were doing and made their way over," Eric said. "Everybody wanted to say hi because they hadn't seen him. I looked at that and thought, 'There's the epitome of respect.'

"Dad was a guy who respected everybody he met and they in turn reciprocated that respect. I have never run into anybody who had anything bad, anything negative to say about our father."

Maybe nobody respected Wayne more than his wife of the last 16-plus years, Charlie.

"I was married to a fantastic man," she said. "There couldn't have been a better husband in the whole world than him.

"He had Eve and Eric, and he really loved his kids. He also loved mine. They thought I was the luckiest girl in the world to have met him after their dad died. They respected and loved him."

So did Hagadone, whose dinner with Wayne and Charlie two weeks ago demonstrated his friend's "prideful" personality.

With his wife, Lola, Hagadone had planned dinner at Beverly's at 6:30 that Saturday night.

"I was worried about his being able to get from the entryway of the hotel clear up to Beverly's, so I arranged for him to get a wheelchair," Hagadone said. He put a valet on alert to help Knudtsen into the wheelchair and take him up to Beverly's on the seventh floor of the Coeur d'Alene Resort.

Didn't happen.

"When Lola and I got there, the bellman said, 'Mr. Hagadone, the Knudtsens came early, and he absolutely refused the wheelchair.' He was not going to use a wheelchair to have dinner with us."

Just under two weeks later, Knudtsen's kidneys were failing.

"He was swept away in just a few hours," said Doug Parker, who was with Wayne the day after the Hagadones and Knudtsens had dinner together. "It was a blessing actually."

Charlie agreed.

"The main thing he wanted was to die at his own home, not somewhere else," she said. "That was the one wish we granted."

Yates Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. A possible date for services is Nov. 13, but at press time, family were awaiting confirmation details.