Around 1953, the year I was 7 years old, LE Krause came to visit us and stayed with the whole summer with our family. We soon learned he was a really sincere and hard-working young guy, the kind your parents would always talk about, saying “Son, why can’t you be more like LE?” In these days, people like that are few and far between.

There are a lot of stories about LE helping my dad do this, that, and the other thing. In those days, my dad was continuously rebuilding our house. Dad bought our house as a blobby-looking, cinder block structure, but when he finished, it was a sleek ranch house with a 360 degree porch and redwood siding.

My favorite LE story is about the first day we took him to our church, the Methodist Church of Cortland, Ohio.

We were usually one of the last families arriving, so we got a pew in one of the first two rows of the church opposite the choir, which was up front, to the right of the pastor. As we started the first hymn, I heard this booming voice beside me, and was amazed to hear someone who sounded like Tennesee Ernie Ford singing every note of the bass line out of the hymn book. This stunning performance continued during each of our usual three hymns until the service was completed.

At the end of the service, my brother Martin and I escaped from the church pretty quickly. When we looked around outside, we didn’t see any sign of LE. He was still inside the church surrounded by the minister and choir members.

When we got home, my mother explained that the choir had descended on LE like a mob as soon as the service was over. The choir director and the minister were begging LE to join the choir immediately, and asking my mother how long he was going to stay in Cortland. He stayed all summer and became the star of our choir until fall. It was pretty fun and inspiring.

In 1910, LE’s Grandfather, Bob Manning migrated from Gypsum, Kansas to the small, lakeside town of Sandpoint, Idaho and purchased a homestead. LE’s mother, Virginia (Birdie) and my father, Eugene, were born Sandpoint, before Bob returned to Gypsum where his father C.B. Manning operated a hardware business. Bob Manning acquired a hardware business and lived the rest of his life in the neighboring town of Roxbury, where Virgina and Eugene grew up and went to school, accompanied by little sisters Muriel and Janet, who were born in Roxbury.

Upon his death in 1957, our grandfather Bob left a 20-acre parcel in Sandpoint, where a small cabin had been built, to Virginia, and a separate 40-acre parcel of forest land to my father. When Virginia and my father Eugene passed, they willed their Idaho land to LE and me, respectively. Over the years, Eugene, LE, and myself made several pilgrimages to Sandpoint to visit our “family homestead”, but we never got around to making any improvements to the land.

The land around Sandpoint is very scenic, including lakes, mountains, and forests that provide enjoyable fishing, skiing, and hiking to locals and tourists. During the years since grandfather Bob purchased the land, the Sandpint area morphed from a lumbering economy into a tourist attraction. In recent years, LE and I had made a connection with local naturalists who installed trails and used our lands for horseback riding and hiking.

In 2018, LE donated his 20 acres to the Kaniksu Land Trust, a local group that creates and maintains local hiking trails. This property, now designated and labeled as the “The Manning Buffer” (named after LE’s grandfather Bob Manning) hosts a pathway known as Greta’s Segway which links two major hiking trails and woodlands that are important components of the Kaniksu Land Trust (KLT) of Bonner County Idaho.

KLT hosted an event in which LE was honored and made a speech.