Marianne Love's Love Story

Back in 1973, Farragut State Park hosted the National Boy Scout Jamboree. By then, I had given up the Forest Service in favor of my first love: journalism, and this is when I met my second and true, lifelong love, a guy named Love. How could you lose?

Gary Pietsch, then publisher of the Sandpoint News Bulletin weekly, asked me to take several trips down to this area prior to the 1973 Boy Scout Jamboree. My assignment was to take pictures, conduct interviews, and write feature stories about the event. I had the freedom to choose whatever topics I wished.

So, I just followed my nose from place to place around Farragut and found my stories. One in particular focused on the Trading Post Warehouse, where an advance team of college-age, handsome former scouts had arrived early to set up their shop for the Jamboree.

While conducting the interview, I was drawn off topic---a common problem of mine. When the dozen or so buff hunks from schools like the University of Texas, Alabama and Georgia learned that I was a school teacher at Sandpoint High School AND the drill team adviser, they started asking questions----one of which was, “Are the girls in Sandpoint better looking than the girls in Coeur d’Alene?” “Of course,” I responded.

Before I knew it, my mouth had once more gotten me into trouble. By the time I left, I had promised to arrange dates for the guys with my drill team girls, many of whom also played on my softball team that summer. Later, after realizing this was probably not a really good idea and stewing about how to get out of this dilemma, I received a call from one of the guys.

He informed me he was the quiet one in the back with the Tulane T-shirt and that he was in charge of the trading post staff. He wanted to assure me that the young men would be perfect gentlemen. He also wanted to know if I would be accompanying the girls to the proposed rendezvous that Saturday night at the Sandpoint City Beach. When I said, I wasn’t sure, he said he wished I would.

So, I did. The Louisiana man was true to his word, and later, he returned to Idaho as a forester. We were married in Sandpoint almost 35 years ago. Bill Love is still a forester for the Idaho Department of Lands, and we’re looking forward to celebrating that special anniversary in June.

We have two children---Willie, the assistant sports editor for the Idaho Press Tribune and Annie, who works for Ground speak , Inc. in Seattle---the creators of the sport of geocaching. Our lovely daughter-in-law, Debbie, works as a staff member for the Silver Sage Council of the Girl Scouts of America in Boise.