COEUR d'ALENE — The legacy of Chris Guggemos was front and center Sunday at Coeur d’Alene City Park, one of several Kootenai County spots where free concerts organized by Guggemos were for years a summertime staple.

A crowd of hundreds attended Sunday’s concert performed by a singer-songwriter panel of musicians in memory of Guggemos who died in September 2022.

For 31 years, Guggemos and his company, Handshake Productions, provided free summer concerts at local parks, beginning in Coeur d’Alene and later expanding to Hayden and Rathdrum.

During the memorial concert, Coeur d’Alene Parks Director Bill Greenwood presented a memorial plaque, tree and grass that will grow for years in the park to honor what Guggemos created.

“This tree I picked because of what it is. It’s a meta-sequoia,” Greenwood said.

The tree was thought to be extinct until a grove of them was found in China in the 1930s.

“This tree is a survivor,” Greenwood said. “When you come here to see it in the winter, and you think it’s dead, it’s not.”

The conifer is a metaphor for living on, he said.

The tree represents what the artists on the stage were trying to convey — that Guggemos’ legacy will continue and that others have picked up what he left behind.

“When I came in to take up the torch, Greenwood was there with the lighter, and the gasoline, and the flame thrower,” said musician and author Michael Koep.

Koep worked with Guggemos in the past, and Chris’ brother, Gary Guggemos, asked Koep to organize the concert series so the show could go on. Koep immediately said yes and has been figuring out the rest.

“When you have something you build, and it continues on, people commemorate you because you started something — that’s something,” Gary said. “That’s something bigger than life itself.”

Koep took this year to establish the same connections — to collaborate with cities, musicians, organizers and sponsors.

“The cool legacy with Chris Guggemos, the name of his company was Handshake Productions, and he literally lived that,” concert attendee Pat McGoughey said. McGoughey and Guggemos were friends for decades. “His handshake meant something. Without question. He was a really special guy.”

No one hopes to replace Chris Guggemos or what he’s done for the community, Greenwood said, but they do hope to build on what he’s accomplished.

Cristopher Lucas led the memorial concert, during which musicians spoke between songs about how Chris inspired them to write, encouraged them to perform or hired them to succeed.

“In honor of Chris, because that was a guy who was always pushing people to music and making people happy,” singer and songwriter Isaac Walton said. “If you lose somebody, and most all of us have lost someone we love, it's good to remember that their candle still burns. And it can burn even brighter because we take that energy and we share it with everybody else, and pass the torch.”