Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Widmyer will honor former Post Falls Community Development Director Gary Young during a ceremony on Friday at McEuen Park. The event will take place at 4 p.m. near the playground.

In memory of Young, an oak tree and was recently planted alongside the Centennial Trail, accompanied with a memorial stone donated by the Panhandle Parks Foundation.

“Gary’s roots ran deep in Coeur d’Alene,” said his wife, Sandy. “The military took his family to other countries and states but he and his family always returned to the Lake City to spend summers here.”

Young was a former city planner in Post Falls and later became community development director. He left public service and started in private practice as a consultant and landscape architect in 2007. He and his wife started Verdis, a planning and design firm, where he worked until his death on January 10, 2015.

“Gary always found a way to give back to the community he loved so much,” Sandy said. “He served on CDA’s 2020 Visioning Committee, Kootenai County’s Citizens for Balance, and was a member and past President of the Post Falls Rotary Club.