CDHS Beaver plaque unveiling set on July 4

A plaque with a bronze Coulee Dam High School Beaver mascot will be installed on the basalt pillar in front of Lake Roosevelt Schools and unveiled July 4 at 11 a.m. in a brief ceremony to which all are invited.

Coulee Dam High School was open from 1947 until 1971, when it merged with Grand Coulee High School to form Lake Roosevelt.

“Beavers sent their fierce spirit to Lake Roosevelt Raiders,” the plaque reads.

A plaque commemorating Grand Coulee High School, featuring their Tiger mascot, was installed on the same pillar in 2017.

Bert Smith, a member of the last 1971 CDHS class, has helped lead CDHS alumni in raising money for the plaque, asking 1970 CDHS graduate Bobby Knight, “a world-class talent,” to design it.

Knight, who now lives in Prescott, Arizona, is a professional artist and sculptor, and worked in the movie industry making props and doing sculpting work on big-name movies such as “Minority Report,” “War of the Worlds,” “National Treasure,” “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” and many more.

For the Coulee Dam plaque, Knight made the beaver sculpture out of wax, and through an involved process, a foundry turned the sculpture into bronze while yet another foundry attached it to the plaque.

“I had a great time in high school,” Knight said in a previous Star article on making the plaque. “A lot of people I graduated with, I went to kindergarten with.”

Smith said that the Beaver mascot plaque was finished for less than the $3,300 estimated budget.