COEUR d’ALENE — Denny Burt stood for the longest time at the end of his family’s driveway waiting for his mother to come home with a special gift.

The sixth-grader was more than thrilled with the “doggy-looking trombone” that she had rented from the former Music Center on Sherman Avenue. It was an old, worn horn but ultimately would fashion Burt’s future.

He was the only trombonist at Dalton Elementary at a time when the school district was pursuing music.

“So I thought I was pretty good,” he said with a slight smirk.

He became a first-chair trombonist with the Coeur d’Alene High School marching band. He helped form a pep band at CHS, The Seven, which traveled with teams around North Idaho. He currently plays with the Coeur d’Alene Big Band.

And since 1974 he has owned the store where his mother rented that tired trombone, now Burt’s Music and Sound, where he restores virtually all kinds of band instruments for aspiring and accomplished musicians from Moscow to Bonners Ferry and Mullan to Post Falls.

He helps keep a local art form afloat as North Idaho’s music man.

“The competition was fierce for sports and I ended up on the bench,” he said. Especially one incident when he drove the wrong way on a basketball court and scored two points for the opposition. His girlfriend refused to hold his hand on the bus ride home.

“So I directed my attention to music, where I could play all the time and do well.”

Burt moved to Coeur d’Alene from Nebraska with his parents and older sister when he was a year old.

“I’m about as close to being a native as you can get without actually being one,” he said.

Now 66, he is the father of four and the grandfather of six and is firmly rooted in Coeur d’Alene.

The family moved into the former Lakeview Cottages on Northwest Boulevard, then to an apartment complex and finally to a three-acre parcel in Dalton Gardens and built a house.

“It was a different time for sure,” he said. “Most of the roads were gravel and I walked to school or rode my bike — a one-speed bike. I got into trouble for taking some of my parents‘ playing cards and using clothing clips to mount them on the back frame and into the spokes to make that cool motorcycle sound. They found out about my little episode during a pinochle party.”

In addition to farm errands, Burt’s youth centered around Walden’s Market on 15th Street, now the Dalton Market. He would get three cents for pop bottles and a penny for beer bottles that he would collect from ditches along the roads.

And he served as the family grocery courier.

“That was the store for us back then. There were no mega grocery stores. I would get sent down on my bicycle to the little meat department to get a half-pound of liverwurst or bologna for sandwiches,” he said. “Everybody had a locker in the walk-in freezer. They had a charge account and you just simply found your name and at the end of the month you paid it. That’s how groceries were handled back then.”

In eighth grade, his parents bought him snow skis for Christmas.

Though he wasn’t keen on the idea, he rode the ski bus to Schweitzer every Saturday and soon made new and adventurous friends. So he took to it aggressively. In fact, during the first season he broke three skis.

Later he also broke ribs, his pelvis and had a concussion, all of which introduced him to the National Ski Patrol. In 1996 he joined the patrol at Silver Mountain, where he proposed to his wife, Trena, by writing the proposal on a blackboard at the top of a chairlift, a lift she didn’t ride most of the day.

“Everyone on the mountain saw it before she did. Finally, someone got her on that chairlift and she saw the proposal,” he said. “I had to wait an entire week for the answer to show up on the same blackboard.”

They have been married 18 years.

Burt moved to Lookout Pass Ski Area in 2006 and has served as the director of the ski patrol there. He also has spent time as a scuba instructor.

While still in high school he found ways to entertain and get attention.

Coeur d’Alene High School was then in the building that is now Lakes Middle School. Burt noticed there were trap doors in the floor at various locations that led to what he would refer to as “the bomb shelter,” a crawl space under the school. He traced the allen wrench latch with pencil and paper during French class and created a tool to fit. Burt and friends then spent more than their share of time exploring the catacombs of CHS.

Then there was the gun incident.

Burt was assigned to do a “speech to convince” at CHS and he took it seriously. His topic was Gun Safety, so he arrived with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with everything but actual ammunition. After his speech he pointed the gun out an open window and fired a blank.

“Well, I knew how loud a 12-gauge is outside but I never honestly equated that to the level of going off in that high-ceiling speech class,” he said.

After his teacher recovered, Burt was assigned to litter patrol around the school.

His music prowess earned him a scholarship to North Idaho College while he also worked at the Music Center. Occasionally he would take instruments to music stores in Spokane for repair and would watch the experts work their magic.

He decided he wanted to be part of that club. And has ever since.

“I have dedicated myself to the public and music programs of this community for so many years that’s it’s hard to see what will happen for this old repair man and wonder what things will look like in the future,” he said. “But for now I am still called to be the musical instrument repair guy for a bit longer and will hold on to my repair tools.”

Oh, and by the way, the music man’s favorite contemporary group? The Eagles.