Gail Claire Cole, 94

Gail Claire Cole, 94, a longtime Hope and Sandpoint resident passed away at St. Andrews Care Center in Portland, Ore., on March 18, 2009.

Memorial services will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, April 8, 2009, at the Lakeview Funeral Home in Sandpoint with interment at the Lakeview Cemetery in the spring.

 Gail was born Helen Claire Sturm on April 8,1914, at (Tiffin) Venice Township, Ohio, the daughter of William E. Sturm and Florence Burgoyne. After the early death of her mother, Gail was raised and educated in a Catholic convent in Michigan until she finished high school.

Married to William (Bill) Livingston in the 1930s, she and her husband became celebrities in the Pontiac/Lapeer Michigan area in the 1930s as the only known male/female motorcycle daredevil and stunt riding team.

They were members of the Wolverine Motorcycle Club; and Gail was the only woman at that time to perform the flaming double board wall crash and many other daredevil feats. They preformed at various motorcycle-racing sites and County Fairs up until World War Two when she went to work in the defense factories while her husband went off to war.

During the Korean War, Gail went to work at the Boeing Company assembly plant in Renton, Wash., for a short time. She discovered and fell in love with northwestern Montana and Hope Idaho on a vacation to Glacier Park and North Idaho in the 1940s. She moved to Kalispell, Mont., shortly thereafter and went to work for the U.S. Forest Service. Early in the 1950s she moved to Hope, Idaho, where she worked for the Great Northern Railroad.

 She married Perry A. Cole in 1961. She and Perry traveled extensively enjoying cruises and winters in Florida and Arizona. She loved the outdoors and spent much of her time rock hounding, antiquing, birding, and bottle collecting and her very favorite thing was gardening.

While living in Hope she had a building constructed to house her large collection of antiques, opened it to the public and for schoolchildren's field trips. She moved into Sandpoint in 1988 and had one of the largest flower and vegetable gardens in town at that time.

 She is survived by a daughter, Joanne Fry (Jerry) of Libby, Mont.; her sons, Bill Livingston of Pueblo Colo., Steve Livingston (Elaine) and his children, James, Jeffery, Jackie and Justin of Rupert, Idaho, and James R. Livingston of Sandpoint; her grandchildren, Kristal Livingston of Riverton, Wyo., Marrgo Livingston of Gun Barrel City, Texas, Katy (Kaiddo) Morris (Livingston) of Perrin Texas, Keno Livingston, serving in the U.S. Army deployed to Bahrain, James L. Dandin (Livingston) of Oklahoma City, Okla., Candy Henry of Libby, Allen Beach of Seaside Ore.; and numerous great-grandchildren.

 She was preceded in death by her parents, and husband, Perry A. Cole (1968).

 Gail's philosophy about life was to practice the Golden Rule and to always take time to stop and smell the flowers.

Lakeview Funeral Home in Sandpoint is handling the arrangements. Please visit Gail's online memorial at www.lakeviewfuneral.com and sign her guest book.