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- Han tjänstgjorde i 2:a världskriget
- Bio: Louie was the third youngest of 10 children of Mathias and Veronica Schmit.
- Louie grew up in the home his dad built, with one grandmother living next door and the other across the alley, out the back door. Out the front door and across the street was the St. Aloysius Catholic Church and School, which entitled him to special attention from all the nuns. He recalled being "surrounded" and always being told, you better not get in trouble. During high school, he worked as a bellhop at the Lisbon Hotel, where he earned $4 a week plus tips and supper. Seventy years later, talking about those days, he still had an appreciation for a rare tip of a shiny 50-cent piece. He worked Saturdays and every night after school until 11 p.m. Even then, he knew he was fortunate to have one of the best jobs in town for a young man, and started a lifetime of hard work and appreciation for his blessings.
- After graduating high school in 1945, Louie joined the service, following in the footsteps of his five older brothers and oldest sister who was a U.S. Navy nurse. He served in the U.S. Army in Italy. Upon returning to Lisbon, he went to school in Fargo, N.D., to learn how to repair "typewriters, business machines and cash registers" for the Burroughs Corporation. It didn't take him long to discover he did not like spending his days indoors, so he went to work with his dad, who was a carpenter, and worked by his side until his dad retired.
- One day in 1952, seeing a young lady pass by in a red coat, he asked his youngest sister Mary who that girl was. That girl ended up being Phyllis Idso, from nearby Casselton, N.D., whom he married and spent the next 61 years with. Phyllis was by Louie's side every day thereafter.
- In 1967, at age 40, when many people are settling in, Louie and Phyllis packed up their five children in a white Plymouth sedan, loaded their belongings in a moving van and moved to Moscow. That started an adventure that lasted for the next 45 years. When asked why Moscow, Louie's typical answer was, "I threw a dart at a map." In reality, he wanted to get out of the harsh weather conditions of North Dakota and also be near a university. He was thinking ahead to an opportunity for his kids to get a college education and perhaps something better. Moscow met that criteria, plus he knew one person there who grew up across the street from him in Lisbon. So, off they went.
- A couple years later, Louie built a house in Troy and moved the family there. The kids all grew up in Troy and during that time lived in two more houses that Louie built for the family, eventually settling on a 5-acre wooded lot with a custom-made log home. Unlike today, where it takes multiple work crews and a truckload of power tools, Louie built homes with his sons by his side from the ground up - from the footings, to the foundation, to the framing, to the finish work, to the custom-built kitchen cabinets - with not much more than a SkilSaw, a hammer, a square, a tape measure and a pencil. There are many homes and remodeling jobs in the Troy area that serve as a testament to his master craftsman carpentry skills.
- In 1988, after their youngest son graduated from college, while many folks would be thinking of retiring, Phyllis and Louie started their next series of adventures. First, they took jobs as estate caretakers in Fresno, Calif., and then Seattle. After that, they moved to Hebron, N.D., to be near Louie's brother Richard, and eventually returned to the Pacific Northwest and worked at a recreational vehicle resort on the Oregon Coast. At the turn of the century, in the year 2000, they moved to Coeur d'Alene and "retired."
- Like many of those born in the Depression era, Louie was a humble man, worked hard, never wanted for anything and never complained. His kids all used to think that Louie liked chicken wings, because that is what he always ate whenever Phyllis stretched her delicious homemade chicken into a meal for a family of seven (Phyllis got the liver and neck). It was years later that the kids realized he ate the chicken wings so they could have the legs, thighs and breasts - something better. It was a theme of his life. Louie did not view that as a sacrifice, it is what he wanted, and he ate the wings until the very end. This was just one of many examples for us all, of Louie as a caring husband, dad and grandpa.
- Louie will be buried at the Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake.
- Memorials can be made by donating to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in memory of Louie's five nieces and nephews lost to this disease.
- Lewiston Tribune March 20, 2016
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1927 - 2016 (88 år)
