The driver called police. The police contacted Trudy Samuelson, who owns Mission Valley Properties, where the boys had been skateboarding. Samuelson called her insurance agent.
Next thing you know, the signs were up, joining similar ones at the school, parks and others businesses:
Samuelson added two more words and four figures to the message.
"Sorry guys," the signs say.
And then she wrote out a $1,000 check to Skate Ignatius, the nonprofit organization that wants to build a skate park in town.
"I knew it was a liability," Samuelson says about allowing skateboarding up until a couple of weeks ago, "and I knew it was noisy. But I'm on a corner lot with lots of cement, and the kids had nowhere else to go."
St. Ignatius police visited Samuelson.
"They told me, 'The town doesn't want the liability, and Trudy, neither do you,' " Samuelson says. "I didn't want one of the kids to get hurt, so I took it away."
But not without doing her part to provide an alternative.
Now, if about 395 more businesses and individuals do the same, St. Ignatius will have its Skate Ignatius.
The plans call for a 17,000-square-foot skatepark to be built in two phases. They've got a design, found a location - Taleman Park near the historic St. Ignatius Mission - they've incorporated maintenance into their budget, and they've found a way to deal with insurance.
Now all they need is the bulk of the $450,000 it will take to build it.
The alcohol-related deaths of four children on the Flathead Indian Reservation in a relatively short period of time over 2003-04 first spurred Mission Valley citizens to meet.
"The deaths in Ronan hit hard," says Kristie Nerby. "It seems like we have endless tragedy up here, and week after week a lot seems to stem from St. Ignatius. It's been overwhelming to our community, and when the alcohol deaths happened, it really struck a chord."
Fifty people from around the Mission Valley - parents, community and religious leaders, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal officials - met and quickly identified their biggest concerns for the youth of the area: poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, fragmented families, disenfranchised youth.
"What was not forthcoming were solutions," Nerby says. "We walked away thinking we were moving forward, and it kind of petered out."
Meantime, she says, she saw more evidence that more youngsters were slipping through the cracks.
"Starting to dabble in drugs and alcohol," she explains. "There's this constant anxiety that this kid will turn to that, or that kid will turn to this."
She called tribal elder Chuck Tellier, who had organized the initial meeting, and asked if she could take his idea and run with it on a more local scale.
He agreed.
There had been discussions, she says, of what sorts of things might attract teens and families - basketball courts, a folf course, a playground, picnic pavilion, a skatepark.
Nerby proposed what she calls the Recreation Coalition.
"The intention on my part was to have people pick a project to work on," Nerby says. "I picked the skatepark."
And then she set to work.
"The thing about a skatepark is always the liability," says Nerby, whose son Keenan spends eight to 10 hours a day on a skateboard when he's not in school.
Nerby got help from folks in Missoula and Polson, where skateparks had recently been built.
Then-Polson Mayor Randy Ingram and Parks Superintendent Karen Sargeant told Nerby how their community was able to overcome the insurance costs. A city's municipal insurance will cover a skatepark at no extra cost if it is professionally designed and professionally built on city property, they explained. They turned her on to Dreamland Skateparks of Lincoln City, Ore., which has designed and built skateparks from Big Timber to Bologna, Italy, and constructed the Polson park.
Meantime, "Out of the blue, Chris Bacon calls and says the Missoula Skatepark Association might want to help us, too," Nerby says. "They worked hard for six years to get their skatepark, and they built this amazing infrastructure. They wanted to help smaller communities, and we were in the right place at the right time."
Bacon, president of the Missoula Skatepark Association, and secretary Ross Peterson were among MSA members who traveled to St. Ignatius to meet with Nerby. It was Peterson, Nerby says, who came up with "Skate Ignatius."
"I'm not that clever," she explains. "They really helped us get focused."
While it will take $450,000 to complete the project, $185,000 will get the first phase - which includes a clover bowl - built.
But it's still a lot of cash.
The Tony Hawk Foundation - the world-famous skateboarder contributed to the Missoula and Polson parks, too - coughed up $10,000 early in the project, and they've raised approximately $30,000 so far.
"But we need big chunks of money, and we were selling T-shirts trying to raise it," Nerby says. "We talked about flipping a house to raise more, but that got complicated real fast."
One of Samuelson's agents at Mission Valley Properties, Diane Hughes-Williams, came up with the idea.
"If you just had 400 businesses, individuals or groups give $1,000 each, you'd be there," she told Nerby while proposing the Skate Ignatius 400 Club. "That makes it seem more doable, and I'd like to be the first one."
Hughes-Williams wrote out a $1,000 check. So have Samuelson, Ken Scott of Scott Communications, St. Ignatius chiropractor Jim Thornton and Barb DeVeer of DeVeer Designs, the jewelry maker which employs Nerby. Nerby says Pearl Jam musician Jeff Ament of Missoula has pledged $10,000.
"I don't want to discourage $5 donations," Nerby says. "If that's what they can afford, it brings a tear to my eye that they're willing to give it to us. All the individuals who have given a little - it's all added up."
But they're kicking off the Skate Ignatius 400 Club campaign Monday.
"Diane and Trudy are challenging people in the real estate business to join them," Nerby says. "And $1,000 is 50 people chipping in $20 each. It really is doable when you think about it."
The price tag includes money to be set aside for the city to maintain the skatepark, and St. Ignatius has also agreed to appoint an oversight committee.
"We don't have a parks department," Nerby explains, "and the last thing I want to do is build a burden for the city. We have tennis courts that have fallen into disrepair and a swing set in the park that hasn't had swings on it for the 10 years I've lived here. What we're proposing isn't extravagant. It's expensive because it's virtually indestructible."
Once up, Nerby predicts kids will sweep and shovel to get to the cement year-round.
"A lot of adults forget what it's like to be a kid," she says. "It's way different now than it used to be. You don't see pickup games of basketball very much anymore. Technology has changed things. Kids are instant-messaging on their phones, they're on the computer."
That's why an individual sport like skateboarding - the facilities would also serve those who roller-skate or use in-line skates - makes sense, Nerby says.
"You don't need five or 10 people to do it," she says. "You just grab your board and go work on tricks. My son does it all day, then comes home and falls in bed."
It beats the boredom that can lead to trouble, Nerby says. And it beats the trouble that can lead to death, which is why she'll be out there starting Monday, looking for 395 new members for the Skate Ignatius 400 Club.
IF YOU WANT TO HELP:
Kristie Nerby
406-745-4888
e-mail: sti4888@blackfoot.net
web address: http://www.skateignatius.org
Checks can be written to:
LCCDC
Ref : Skatepark
PO Box 254
St. Ignatius, MT 59865
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