Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
They refused the parade car.
Opting for a golf cart instead to drive alongside members of the basketball team, Palouse Days Grand Marshals Monty and Bev Nearing accepted the honor Saturday afternoon.
“They like a low profile,” said Palouse Chamber of Commerce president Debbie Goetz. “This is kind of – a lot – out of their comfort zone.”
“The convertible, that’s for old people,” said Bev Nearing with a smile.
She and husband Monty are a retired couple who have lived in Palouse for 42 years.
Monty, a member of the Tekoa High School class of 1966, married Bev in the same month she graduated from high school in 1971.
They moved to Palouse when Monty got a job with the former Kimball Funeral Home in Palouse.
Later, he went into the auto parts business, working at Arrow Auto Parts then Scourey Auto Parts in Colfax, before running the parts department at Chipman & Taylor Chevrolet for 21 years.
Bev retired in 2004 as the office coordinator for the WSU Housing Department, for which she had worked for 30 years. Monty retired in 2007 and they soon started going to virtually all of the Gar-Pal High sporting events. They have now won multiple biggest fan awards and Monty is a member of the Viking Crew, which is a booster club that supports the teams.
He has become a fixture for the sports programs behind the scenes as well.
It all adds up to being a grand marshal.
“Yeah, right,” Monty said to the notion of him and Bev earning the honor. “We don’t deserve it for sure, we just do what we do to keep things afloat.”
Work in the past year that Monty has been a part of for Gar-Pal sports includes hanging banners in the gym, painting and improving the football concession stand.
On Saturday for the parade, also walking with the golf cart were Ashley, 16, Kaylie, 12 and Levi Fix, 11. They are the children of Bryan and Kim Fix. The Nearings have become adopted grandparents of the family, which Bev first met while placing them in WSU family housing in 1997.
The Nearings have no children of their own.
As for the golf cart, it was provided by Steve Holbrook.
“He is going to sell it, but he hung on to it long enough for us to use it in the parade,” said Bev.
Normally, this time of year the Nearings would be at her family’s property at Tepee Creek, Idaho, near Pritchard.
But they came down from the mountain earlier this year.
“It was thoughtful, it was very nice,” Bev said of the honor being named a grand marshal.
“If you need something, they’re there,” said Goetz. “They’re just outstanding citizens, that good old hometown American people.”
“We’d just like to thank the community,” Monty said. “It’s been great living here. We love this town. We don’t deserve this, but we appreciate it.”
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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