SANDPOINT - The man defines himself by his work and his family, his love of the town and passion for the health of the local medical community. But in many ways, Jack Parker's life can also be defined by a one-square-block section of downtown Sandpoint.

His father, O.B. Parker, bought into Sandpoint Motor Co. in 1927 and put up the original building on that part of Cedar Street in 1929. His mother, Mary - a revered schoolteacher who taught generations of Sandpoint kids - gave birth to Jack four years later. From that point on, this particular block acted as a frame for what would come.

On one corner of the frame sat the hospital, which was made possible, in large part, thanks to O.B.'s donation of adjacent property on which it could sit. Move to another corner and you find the First Presbyterian Church, where Jack and his wife, Shirley - also a local favorite as a schoolteacher during her career - attended church as a family.

Today, Parker is still a key player in the life of this square block. Property that once held his car lot is now home to the new medical office building that is soon to open at Bonner General Health. The grand opening of that facility and Parker's retirement from the hospital's board of directors fall within scant months of one another, following 51 years of service as a director.

BGH hasn't missed the symbolism of it all. When the new building opens, the skybridge that connects the medical office building to the hospital proper will bear Parker's name.

When did you join the hospital board?

In the fall of 1964. To put that in perspective, when I joined, Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson were running for president and Medicare wasn't even in our vocabulary yet. So it was a while ago.

We were in the old Farragut Hospital on the corner there and our biggest challenge was to keep the doors open. I think we had four doctors on staff and now we have close to 50.

Since that time, was one of the biggest changes the move to the current facility?

Oh, sure. We built that building in 1973 and we've had two remodels since then. That was a tremendous change in the number of people we had and the things we could offer. And it continues to grow.

So you had a small hospital struggling to keep the doors open and you go to the community with a plan to build a big, new one - was that a tough sell?

It was a challenge. We spoke to every ladies group, every club and organization, every Beta Sigma Phi. And people would ask, 'How much more are you going to charge to get sick?'

When we formed the hospital district, we didn't take in the whole county, because we knew the people over in Priest River didn't give a darn about a hospital in Sandpoint. It was tough, back then, to raise money with bond issues in Bonner County. So we applied for a government grant and got about $800,000. Then we had enough equity to go out and borrow money.

What did a new hospital cost at that time?

Our escrow was $1.74 million to build that building and the low bid was $2.1 million, so we were scratching from that point. But it worked out. We're still levied as part of the tax budget, but it's a very, very small portion of revenue for Bonner General. I think it's somewhere around $900,000 a year now and our revenue is about $45 million.

Did the new hospital act as a magnet for medical professionals?

Yeah, it did. You know, the first things people ask about when they come to a new area is the schools and the health care. The quality of life in Sandpoint, of course, is a big selling point for a new physician.

But that's all changing. Doctors aren't going out and hanging their shingle on the street someplace. They want to work for somebody - they want a job. They don't want all that call; they don't want to be out every night. So that's one of the biggest changes.

The hospital has grown into adjacent properties and now is about to christen a new medical office building on the site where you ran your own business for many years. Did that expansion happen piecemeal, or was it part of a strategic vision?

It was a visionary plan. We were running out of room, doing what we needed to do. And our departments weren't the best organized. We looked at various pieces of property around the area and found a couple that would have been fine, except the lowest estimate was about $60 million.

That was about the time that Taylor-Parker Motors decided to move out north, to the highway. I owned two-thirds of the block and Greg Taylor owned one-third and I was looking for a tenant. The hospital came to me and said, 'What are you going to do with it?' I told them, 'I don't know, but I've got to find somebody.'

They started looking at it, but I couldn't participate in those discussions as a board member, obviously. They had it appraised and we sold it to them for less than the appraisal. It was fair to them and fair to us.

I got kind of nostalgic when they tore down my buildings, but that's part of it.

That has to be a very mixed feeling, emotionally.

Yes, when they tore it down in one, big swoop, all I could think of was all the hours it took for me to put it together. I took a bunch of pictures of the demolition and my wife gave them to me for Christmas. Like I said, it was pretty nostalgic.

But that's turned around now and I'm so pleased with what's happening. The hospital owns the land, Parkwood Business Properties owns the building and we lease back the first two floors from them. So it's been a win-win thing for us.

The existing building was pretty modern when it was built in 1973, but the knock on that facility these days is that it looks like it was built in, well, 1973.

And it looks even more like the 1970s now, sitting next to that beautiful, new building. (laughs).

Are there plans to update the facade to modernize its look?

That will be the plan.

What keeps a guy on a hospital board for more than 50 years?

I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew. When I was a downtown retail merchant, I always felt that when you take from the community, you have to give to the community. I always had an interest, because, when they built that Farragut Hospital, my dad owned a piece of that block and he gave it to the hospital.

And I had an interest in medicine. I took Pre-Med in college until about the second semester of my freshman year. I was taking chemistry and I'm color blind, so I couldn't read my unknowns. I asked a fellow, 'How much chemistry do I have?' and he said, 'Oh, about another five years.' So I thought I'd better change professions.

I guess I just got interested in the thing and it just kept going on and on. They kept electing me chairman. I was elected chairman for the first time in '68. Finally, in 2006, I said, 'We've got to get somebody else to do this.'

For folks who might not know the history, what do you mean when you talk about the Farragut Hospital?

They had small hospitals around town, some of which are residences now, and they had a chance to buy the infirmary from Farragut (Naval Base). What they did was cut it in pieces, put it on barges and float it from Bayview down to here. They put it on that piece of property at Third and Alder and made a hospital out of it. And it did fine for many years.

It's kind of funny - when we built the new hospital, we wanted to make a long-term care center out of that, but it wouldn't qualify because the doorways and hallways weren't wide enough.

Inside, Bonner General Health has been aggressively investing in state-of-the-art medical equipment for some time. Did the board have to swallow hard before saying 'yes' to those requests? Those toys aren't cheap.

They certainly aren't. They're tremendously expensive. But, if we're going to be a viable institution, we've got to have them. So we stepped up and bought the latest equipment as we were financially able to do that.

Larger medical facilities are gobbling up smaller hospitals across the country. How does BGH manage to not only stay in place, but keep growing?

It's a challenge, but we've partnered with all the hospitals in North Idaho - Bonners Ferry, St. Maries, Coeur d'Alene, Kellogg - and Kootenai Health has their cancer center at Bonner General. The trend, as you say, is that way. But we really want to keep it independent if we can. That's our goal. We've had good leadership and we've been able to do that.

What's the state of medical care in Bonner County today?

I think it's very, very good. You see the number of specialties we have now that we never even thought about before. We've got pretty much the whole spectrum covered. We don't do heart surgery and probably never will, but we do have cardiologists here.

In general, do you think the community is aware of what we have here?

No, I don't. We don't blow our horn enough, but we're working to publicize that more and let people know what we really do have to offer. We get letters from people who have been in the hospital that say, 'I had no idea what you could do here - I've never had better care.' We get that all the time.

A lot of our local docs have reached retirement age. Is there a new wave of talent coming in to fill that gap?

That's a problem, not only for Sandpoint, Idaho, but it's a problem nationally, particularly for primary care doctors. It's a recruiting thing and we're constantly recruiting for new doctors.

You've said that you think the new medical office building will help downtown Sandpoint come alive. How do you see that taking place?

Well, you're going to have a lot of people employed there and it's a highly visible area. More people will be coming to it for care and they'll mingle around downtown. It's something brand new and fresh - it's not just a car dealership on that corner anymore, it's a major medical center.

There are still a couple of parking lots over there and I think, more and more over the years, that whole area will become a medical campus.

You've watched the evolution of downtown Sandpoint your whole life. How's that patient look these days?

Oh, you hate to see empty storefronts on First and Cedar, but you've seen, in the last year, that a lot of those have been taken up and have come alive. I think this medical office building and the remodel of the Belwood Building across the street have brought new life to that area and I think that's going on all through town. I'm optimistic about the future of Sandpoint.

You're in the unique position of being able to chronicle history vis-a-vis the cars that were cool at the time. Can you toss out a couple examples of cars that have been associated with watershed moments for you?

Of course, I grew up in the car industry. When I started work in 1955, we had 13 car dealerships in Sandpoint. If you'll remember from the Lost in the '50s that we just had, the '55 Chevy and the '55 Ford were really the 'in' cars at the time. That kept developing through the '60s and '70s.

I remember very well the Oldsmobile diesel from the '80s - they were the greatest thing that ever happened and they were the worst thing that ever happened to the car business. I remember when a pickup was a truck that you used for work. Now everybody's got a pickup. It's a passenger car.

How do the new vehicles stack up against the old classics?

I've heard people say, 'They don't make them like they used to.' I just say, 'Thank God.' (laughs)

Think of the problems we used to have. You had all the carburetion and the rattles and the leaks. Tires that lasted 4,000 miles. Now people run a set of tires forever. They've improved so much. So much.

Along with the hospital, another one of your passions is Rotary. How long have you been involved?

Since it was formed here. We actually were chartered in 1966 and I was a charter member. There are two organizations I pay dues to: the Rotary Club for what they've done to take polio out worldwide, and the Shrine for what they've done for crippled children in the United States. Those organizations are very dear to me.

After 51 years on the hospital board - and the majority of that as chairman - is it going to be hard for you to unplug from all that?

The hospital changed the bylaws and created a Director Emeritus status and made me a Director Emeritus of the hospital board. You're right - it would be a little difficult for me, after all that time, to be completely out of the loop and not know what's going on. They told me I can come to meetings, but I can't vote. So this is a way to keep me in the loop and keep me out of the way.

The hospital has been very good to me. At the last board meeting, they told me they had named the skybridge after me. It's called the Jack Parker Bridge. That was a shock to me.

Kind of appropriate, though, since you have been a bridge for so many projects in the community and for the hospital.

A bridge from the past to the present? Yeah, I have been part of that.