Friends, family seek memorial for McTevia

SANDPOINT — The U.S. Forest Service said agency policy is preventing friends and family from erecting a memorial at the site of a deadly all-terrain vehicle mishap that claimed the lives of two people earlier this month.

“That is something, by policy nationally, that we don’t do,” Idaho Panhandle National Forests spokesman Jason Kirchner said on Tuesday.

Thomas McTevia, a 42-year-old Coeur d’Alene resident and Tina Hoisington, 45, of Lewiston, were killed on April 19 when the utility terrain vehicle they were in plunged down a steep cliff at the Bernard Overlook at the south end of Lake Pend Oreille.

A dachshund that was in the UTV somehow survived the plunged and was found six days after the mishap by McTevia’s 18-year-old son, Ryan.

Friends and family sought permission to put up a memorial, but Kirchner said the Forest Service cannot honor the request it would be inundated with them if it did.

“If we allowed such memorials, the forests would be filled with thousands of them,” said Kirchner.

Tonya Reed, a longtime friend of Tom McTevia, urged people on a memorial Facebook page not to get discouraged by the Forest Service’s decision. Reed said there is many other ways to memorialize McTevia.

“He would just want us to just keep pushing through and not get upset,” Reed said in a post to the Idaho Adventures in Memory of Tom McTevia Facebook page.

Reed said they can work with the city of Coeur d’Alene to build benches or add some improvements to the wheelchair accessible hiking trail on Tubbs Hill. McTevia lost the use of his legs in a prior ATV crash and became an access advocate.

Kirchner said there currently are no plans to add safety improvements, such as a barrier, at Bernard Overlook in light of the deaths.

“There’s an investigation that’s being done by law enforcement to see if there is any need for anything like that,” said Kirchner.

Kirchner said the IPNF roughly averages two to five serious off-highway vehicle accidents or fatalities a year.