Payette County ID Archives News.....Klenck invests time and effort into Idaho Hall of Fame January 20, 1999
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Patty Theurer seymour784@yahoo.com February 13, 2006, 1:36 am

Argus Observer January 20, 1999
Argus Observer
Ontario, Oregon
Wednesday, January 20, 1999

Klenck invests time and effort into Idaho Hall of Fame
By Ann Crosby
ARGUS OBSERVER

FRUITLAND-Fruitland’s Old School Community Center will be the site of this 
year’s Idaho Hall of Fame Association’s annual meeting and the 1999 induction 
and installation banquet.

Plans to meet in the former Fruitland High School building were announced to 
Fruitland Chamber of Commerce members and guests by the association’s 
president, Dee Klenck of Payette.

Klenck, a former Payette business operator, has invested more than a decade of 
time and effort in establishing the Idaho Hall of Fame which recognizes the Gem 
State’s most distinguished, from corporate America’s giants to the sports 
world’s greatest players to inventors and researchers whose contributions left 
their marks on society.

Harmon Killebrew, Payette’s own baseball star who distinguished himself first 
with the Washington Senators and later with the Minnesota Twins, is among the 
early Idaho Hall of Fame inductees, as is Philo Farnsworth whose invention gave 
the world television. 

This year’s list of inductees is to be decided soon by a committee headed by 
University of Idaho librarian emeritus Richard Beck.  On the induction 
candidates’ list are the late Carroll Meteer Shanks, Payette High School 
graduate distinguished by his business acumen and his Prudential Insurance Co. 
presidency, and Lewis Sarett of Viola the discoverer of synthetic cortisone 
which today wears the Merck pharmaceutical label.  

With the passage and enactment of Idaho Senate Bill 1242 in 1997, during the 
final hours of the Idaho Legislature’s 54th session, Idaho became the first 
state to have its an institution honoring the human contribution on a widely 
diverse scale, according to Klenck.  

The bill creating the Idaho Hall of Fame also sent its funding mechanism in 
motion and empowered its advisory board to oversee development of a permanent 
facility, a place to showcase memorabilia donated or loaned by inductees.

Federal 501 (C3) designation allows the nonprofit institution to accept 
donations and sell memberships as fund-raising methods.  Velma Morrison, the 
widow of Morrison-Knudson founder Harry Morrison, and Albertson’s have already 
made major contributions.  

Klenck and others on the board are meeting today in the Idaho Department of 
Commerce facilities to select a master of ceremonies for September’s annual 
gathering, as well as to work out program details.  

Kleck seems no less excited today about the future of the Idaho Hall of Fame 
than she was in 1985, when the concept was formed. 

She has been able to measure considerable progress, especially since 1992 when 
Pocatello donated an eight-acre site for the organization’s permanent home.

The dream is to build a replica of the Idaho exposition which was built when 
Chicago hosted the 1893 Columbian Exhibition.  The World’s Fair structure, 
designed by Spokane’s famous architect Kirtland K. Cotter, used some 90-foot-
long cedar logs which later were cut up for bumper stickers after the 
building’s purchaser donated the structure to Wisconsin state officials.  
Klenck expects the fund-raising to build the replica to take considerable time, 
but she believes the effort to be worthwhile.  Meanwhile, she and others are 
trying to establish a traveling Idaho Hall of Fame memorabilia collection which 
can be placed on loan in all of the state’s 44 counties, to allow any state 
resident to share in “honoring the spirit of Idaho,” a phrase Klenck likes to 
use.  

Klenck said “Idahoans on loan to the world” is her favorite in the list of 
descriptive comments she heard along the way as others talked about the Idaho 
Hall of Fame inductees.  The fact the September gathering will be the Idaho 
Hall of Fame’s fifth annual session, Klenck offered, also reinforces a promise 
of the institution becoming permanent.  


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