COEUR d’ALENE — If you ever find yourself in the town of Stonehaven in Scotland, be sure to tell the locals you know the Barclays of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Chances are they won’t know where Idaho is, but they certainly know about the Barclay clan. And you will probably be treated like royalty.

That’s because there are streets, bridges and a town square named for Barclays. And Dick Barclay’s 15,000-square-foot ancestral home is in Stonehaven.

He is a fourth-generation Barclay in Coeur d’Alene, determined to keep alive the legacy of a family that hails from Scotland and has contributed a great deal to the community. His grandfather was a physician and built a two-story hospital on Government Way near the Kootenai County Courthouse. His father and uncle also practiced medicine there.

In 1932, his grandfather forgave $100,000 accrued by his Depression-era patients. He was the second president of the Coeur d’Alene Rotary Club, a position also held by Dick’s father.

His heart is in Coeur d’Alene where he grew up in a stately brick Georgian home his grandfather built in 1925 on East Lakeshore Drive overlooking the lake.

It was a time he refers to as “Happy Days.”

“You’d get up in the morning, put on a bathing suit in the summertime, have breakfast, and head out the door. You played with whoever happened to be outside,” he said. “You had a bike and could ride any place in town.

“There was just nowhere else like it.”

But the lure of the highlands, lochs and glens of the UK’s feisty Lion of the North is also in the blood of the 74-year-old father of two.

Barclay loves the stirring lilt of bagpipes and has learned to play them. He has two Barclay tartan kilts — one that his wife made for him as a wedding present and one that he inherited from his father.

He served as president of the St. Andrews Society for two years in Spokane. And he’s considering starting an annual Robert Burns Day celebration in Coeur d’Alene replete with the ceremonial piping presentation of the haggis, plenty of Scotch whisky, recitation of “Address to a Haggis,” and a rousing rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Barclay said he misses the annual piping school at North Idaho College and the summer Scottish tattoo at Memorial Field. After the event and a night of drinking, pipers would typically show up at the Barclay home during his younger years.

“They would stand in the alley and yell,” he said. “I’d let them in and they’d play pipes all around the house.

“My dad woke one morning and there was the pipe major of the Calgary Highlanders. He said ‘Get up!’ He got up, opened the liquor closet, and away it went.”

The Barclay family roots date locally nearly to the origins of Coeur d’Alene. There is a consistent linage of five Alexanders — all without middle names — from Barclay’s great-grandfather to a nephew.

Barclay was born in Spokane and was 4 when his family moved into the home on East Lakeshore.

He spent hours on Tubbs Hill playing cowboys and Indians with friends. But most of his free time has been centered around the lake where he still keeps a boat moored.

He would swim until the Potlatch mill whistle summoned him home. His father taught him and his two brothers how to fish for kokanee.

“We spent a lot of time out on the lake,” he said. “We knew where they were just from experience. They still follow the same patterns.”

Barclay’s father made up phony names to keep the lake’s kokanee locations secret. And he taught his sons how to smoke up the kokanee after arriving home, typically with their limit.

“I love to fish for kokanee,” Barclay said, noting he still uses much of his father’s gear.

Barclay and his brothers also raced star class sailboats on the lake. They qualified one year for the Olympic trials in Bellingham, Wash., and got whipped by the big boys.

Barclay attended Coeur d’Alene High School and graduated in 1960. As a sophomore, he met a popular girl named Nona Kay Shern. They dated for nine years and married in 1966.

He was class president during his sophomore and junior years, and was known as “Doc” because he spent a lot of time taping ankles and treating minor sprains “and bruised egos” as trainer of the football and basketball teams.

He also played high school baseball after participating in Pee Wee through American Legion years earlier. And he played the clarinet in the CHS marching band and later at Vanderbilt University.

His original plan was to follow in family footsteps and become a physician, but headed in another direction. He earned a chemistry degree at Vanderbilt.

“It was stressful but it was a terrific school,” he said. “But I also had a really good time. I had a lot of fun; maybe too much fun.”

He remembers going to the jazz bars on the celebrated Printers Alley in Nashville and listening to the bands of Boots Randolph and Chet Atkins after the bars had closed.

“You’d go in there and drink moonshine and listen to them play until 2 or 3 in the morning.”

Barclay went on to grad school at the University of Idaho, where he earned a master’s degree in agricultural biochemistry, then a PHD in biochemistry from Washington State University. Finally he spent two years studying clinical chemistry and toxicology at the University of Oregon’s Medical School in Portland.

He was hired as director of the clinical chemistry lab at Deaconess Hospital in Spokane where he worked for 15 years before switching in 1990 to Pathology Associates, owned by Sacred Heart Hospital.

Barclay, who was virtually the only toxicologist in the region at the time, also did counseling and served as an expert witness in court cases.

He retired in 2005 and has since served on the North Idaho Park Foundation Board and 11th Street Marina Board. He also volunteers at the Coeur d’Alene Visitors Bureau and with patient services at Kootenai Health.

Another source of pride is the Guatemala Literacy Project, which provides learning materials, especially textbooks, to a society in poverty. He serves on the board of directors.

His plan is to return some day to visit his beloved Scotland and to stay in the Barclay home for as long as the taxman will allow.

“We are blessed to live here,” he said.

Why?

Barclay simply smiled, turned and nodded out his living room at the sun shimmering on Lake Coeur d’Alene.

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Know a longtime local we should feature? Send your suggestions to Ric Clarke at clarke_ric@yahoo.com.