Dexter Yates: Laughter, music dull death's sting
Ric Clarke Staff Writer | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 1 month AGO
COEUR d’ALENE — It was prom night in 1963 and the evening was rapidly falling apart.
Couples gathered idly in formal dresses and tuxedos at the former Masonic Lodge on Sherman Avenue. The problem was a serious one: no dance music. The band they had hired simply didn’t show up.
So Dexter Yates and a group of Coeur d’Alene High School buddies took matters, and instruments, into their own hands. Yates rolled the lodge’s piano onstage while the others raced home to get a couple saxophones, a guitar and a set of drums.
They had never played together before. They just winged it — and pulled it off.
“We had so much fun that night that we got together and worked on forming a band,” Yates said. “We decided to stay together.”
The Fabulous Shadows were off and running, a band that rocked high schools and colleges in the Pacific Northwest for years then repeatedly took Baby Boomers in their hometown on a rollicking revival to rock 'n' roll's origins from the 1950s and '60s
The Shadows played their final, farewell gig just last August on a boat cruise on Lake Coeur d’Alene with an unusual reputation. The band dedicated all their income over the years to local nonprofit organizations and foundations. The members never took a dime for themselves.
The experience was exhilarating, Yates said, and helped carry him through an emotionally tough career as a funeral home owner and director.
Yates was exposed early to the business that his father, Gilbert Yates, started in 1952. He literally grew up living at Yates Funeral Home on Fourth Street.
The school years in Coeur d’Alene were a dream, he said.
“There was no social status. We all had the same opportunities,” said the 71-year-old father of two sons, Eli and Jeff. “We all had the same opportunity to have summer jobs to make enough money to go to college. The community saw to that.
“Coeur d’Alene was just a great place.”
But a young Dexter Yates knew how to test his limits. As an elementary student he was occasionally kept after school for disruptive behavior.
“I was a jokester,” he said.
“Some of those relationships that started in grade school carried on through high school and college, and in some cases going into the service,” Yates said. “Our class was really close and continues to stay close. It was the best of times.”
His high school yearbook graduation caption says, “The funniest thing about his jokes is how he laughs at them.” The caption of his wife, Karen, simply says, “Class clown.” Nothing has changed for either one.
“The two of us have great senses of humor and like to clown around,” he said. “But on the other hand, everybody knows we can be serious too.”
Despite his antics, small-town Coeur d’Alene knew where to draw the line.
“Everybody knew everybody. You would go downtown and the people who owned the stores knew who you were and who your parents were,” he said. “The police knew who you were, so if you were doing something stupid they would say, ‘Get home or I’m going to call your dad.’”
Apparently, it worked. Yates lettered in four sports at CHS — football, basketball, track and golf.
One of his best memories is returning home from a basketball state championship game in Boise with the team and legendary coach Elmer Jordan. It was one of only two state basketball crowns for CHS, and the community didn’t let them down.
“Cars were lined up on both sides of (old Highway 10) from the port of entry all the way to the school gymnasium with their lights on and honking their horns,” he said. “When we pulled in, the place was packed.”
Yates went on to the University of Idaho to study music, partly because of his youthful training on keyboard and partly because of his involvement with the Shadows.
Then he heard what his father referred to as a “calling.”
Ministry runs deep in the Yates family. His great-grandparents were both pastors. His great-grandfather rode on horseback to mining and logging camps and Indian villages, establishing churches. Yates still has his great-grandfather’s Bible that he carried in his saddlebags.
After a heart-to-heart with his father, Yates decided care and compassion for the disheartened was more important than rock ‘n roll. He cut his music studies short and transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mortuary science.
Yates returned to Coeur d’Alene in 1972 and went to work for his father.
“I started working for him, then we became partners. And then he worked for me,” he said. “That’s a relationship that’s very difficult in a lot of families and businesses, but my dad was really bright and knew how to make it work. He told me there can only be one quarterback on the football team.”
Has it been a difficult job, dealing almost daily with grief and tragedy?
“Yes,” he said emphatically from his office, which is just opposite of his boyhood bedroom at Yates Funeral Home. But the Shadows’ run and supportive family and friends have helped, along with snowmobiling, racquetball and golf.
“It’s hard to explain. In a lot of ways you learn to appreciate life more when you’re surrounded by death,” he said. “So you try to make your time count.”
But the time has come to pass the torch, which is what Yates is in the process of doing with his older son. Still, he won’t disappear any time soon.
“It’s not the kind of thing I can just walk away from,” he said. “I still feel that it’s a calling.”
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