COEUR d’ALENE — Gary Everson is in the business of preserving pride.

He does it one item at a time, but over the years he has made thousands of engraved lifetime mementos. They hang on living room walls and are displayed on book shelves throughout North Idaho.

To the young recipients, they are not just awards. They are Heisman trophies and Oscars. Something to share with your grandkids.

And that’s what has motivated Everson to work long hours in the basement of Everson’s Jewelry in downtown Coeur d’Alene to create memories of moments — trophies and plaques that last and last for athletes he knows personally.

“I watch those kids and follow them in the newspaper,” he said. “I try to get to a match or two just to see what they look like when they get older. You watch them grow up. It’s fun.”

Everson, a 67-year-old father of three and grandfather of six, grew up in and around the jewelry business that his father established in 1946. He was engraving in his teens. And while he has retired after Everson’s closed up shop about a year ago, he keeps a hand in it.

Everson works with the youngest of his three sons, Brent, who owns the Custom Den, an eclectic gift store in Riverstone that also churns out trophies and plaques not only for aspiring athletes but for drama and band students and all kinds of achievers young and old.

He and his two brothers lived on Stanley Hill and had free rein in the summertime in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

“I remember as a grade school student riding my bike down the hill and being gone all day,” he said. “My parents didn’t worry about it. I’d check in with my dad and get a dollar and go to Hudson’s for a burger. As long as you were home for dinner, everything was fine.

“Most of the business people on Sherman knew who you were. They might not know your name, but they knew who you belonged to. It kept you on the straight and narrow. The community was looking out for you. That’s just the way it was.”

Happiness was measured in the freedom but also in free bottles of soda pop. Everson and his buddies would ride their bikes to the former Ralph’s Bottling Co. and stand around doing their best to look deprived until an employee would provide them with a soda pop. Then they would pull the same ploy at the Coke and Pepsi plants on Sherman.

On Little League game day, IGA owner Mae McEuen would also give away soda pop as long as you were wearing your team T-shirt.

It was a different time, said Everson, “free and easy.” When he was 10, he mowed his grandparents‘ lawn in the Fort Grounds. He was told to get a soda pop out of the refrigerator when he was done and take a dollar off the dining room table. And he was ordered to keep the doors unlocked because they didn’t have a key.

“They never locked the house up,” he said, “and never worried about it.”

Everson spent hours on the basketball court in City Park, where he managed to avoid some confrontations with college-age kids he outplayed.

“I learned to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “I looked at it that if you’re going up against somebody who was pretty good, then you learn from them. You pick up their moves, how they shoot or how they move to the basket.”

It worked for him. Everson played three years of varsity basketball at Coeur d’Alene High School under coach Elmer Jordan.

“When we played Sandpoint or Kellogg they had to move the game to North Idaho College. They’d pack the place,” he said. “It was a lot of fun and a great environment.”

During the district finals, rollicking pep assemblies were held every day.

“There was a lot of noise. Loudness you just couldn’t believe,” he said.

Everson served as ASB president at CHS and enrolled after graduation at the University of Idaho, where he earned a business degree. He returned home and went to work at the jewelry store.

In the meantime, he made what he describes as “the best choice of my life.”

During his junior year, an attractive sophomore asked him to a Sadie Hawkins dance. They dated through his senior year and married in 1973 after he graduated from the U of I.

“When Barbara and I started dating she was this really gorgeous girl and that was my first attraction. But over the years she’s such a fine person,” he said. “That’s something you learn that you didn’t appreciate when you were younger.”

Barbara Everson worked for years as a popular teacher in the Coeur d’Alene School District and has retired except for her role as a full-time grandma.

Gary plans to stay active creating accolades for achievers, primarily as a payback.

“Having the adults and business people showing an interest meant a lot to me as a 16-year-old kid. So I’m trying to pass that on to other kids no matter what their interests are.”