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Don Gronning
Kokanos saved countless homes and lives during the more than 40 years he served as a firefighter
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an updated story that first ran in The Miner Dec. 30, 2020. Kokanos died Aug. 17 at age 84. A memorial service for Kokanos is Sept. 5 at 12:30 p.m. at the Priest River Event Center.
PRIEST RIVER – When Les Kokanos turned 80 in 2020, he’d been involved with volunteer fire departments for about half his life, first with the Priest River Fire Department and then, when the West Bonner Fire District was formed, that department. He served as Fire Chief there until fall of 2020, when he stepped aside and Jamie Painton took the reins.
In 2020, he had planned to be all the way out by the first of the year, but those plans changed when COVID-19 struck. When the wife of the fire chief came down with the virus and he had to quarantine, Kokanos was back, effectively serving as fire chief again. His title actually is deputy fire chief.
“He’s the one in charge,” Kokanos said of Painton. “I’m just helping out. I talk to him every day.”
Kokanos has meant a lot to the fire district, says long-time Priest River resident and retired businessman Buck Merritt.
“Mainly because he’s there seven days a week, year in and year out,” Merritt says. “He’s devoted to the district.”
Merritt said Kokanos kept up on what businesses and agencies had surplus equipment they might be willing to donate. He’d get his foot in the door and ask for the donation, Merritt says.
Kokanos was one of the first people Merritt met when he moved to Priest River from Oregon in 1967.
“He helped us move in to our first house,” Merritt said.
Kokanos ended up working for Merritt for years, running the log yard at Merritt Brother’s Lumber Mill, one of several mills Kokanos worked at before retiring the first time at age 63.
“Then I’d come up here every day,” Kokanos said, meaning the West Pend Oreille Fire Station, located near the airport on Highway 57.
Before the West Pend Oreille Fire District was formed, there was no fire protection outside of town, he says. The district’s first form was as a fire protection district, evolving into a tax supported fire district in 1982.
Kokanos said it was a chore to get people to vote for a tax supported fire district, even though it saved them money on their fire insurance.
In 2020, West Pend Oreille Fire District was comprised of 45 volunteers, covering 120 square miles, providing fire protection for about 6,000 people. It had four stations and three elected commissioners – Larry Larsen, Terry Watts and John Telley.
Kokanos said he’d been involved in several big fires over the years. One of the most memorable was the Merritt Brother’s Lumber Mill fire in 1980 and the JD Lumber fire in 1996.
“Those were big fires,” Kokanos said. He was working at Merritt Brothers when that fire happened.
“I can remember when Merritt’s burned,” he said. “It was a Saturday. I was going out the back door and saw all the black smoke.”
The huge fire destroyed the mill. Kokanos said he remembers Buck and Wayne Merritt asking him and some others if they should rebuild.
“We said yes,” Kokanos said. Kokanos said he enjoyed working with the Merritts. Buck was quite a hunter, often flying to Canada to go moose hunting.
“Buck would come up and say, ‘Let’s go hunting,’” Kokanos remembered. “We’d take off and go the rest of the week.”
Buck Merritt laughed. He says Kokanos wasn’t that much of a hunter, but liked to go along.
“It was a good outing for Les,” Merritt said.
Kokanos was born in the Yakima Valley in Washington. He came to Priest River in 1960.
“My folks moved here,” he said. Before he came to Priest River, he had lived in Oregon.
Kokanos had been married to his wife, Judy, for 40 years. It’s the second time Kokanos has been married. He was married to his first wife, Eileen, for 22 years.
He has six kids, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 18 in all.
Firefighting isn’t the only task involved in operating a fire district. Kokanos and his fellow volunteers did a lot of work refurbishing vehicles so they would be up to speed. In 2020, the district had 21 apparatus, as the different firefighting vehicles are called, including a 5,000-gallon water tanker.
Kokanos figured he’d saved a few lives in the years. He said he enjoyed the ambulance work he did as an EMT with the Priest River Ambulance. He thrived working on trauma victims.
“One day, I had two gunshot victims,” he said, including Don Rabe, the owner of the Laclede store who was shot by a robber. He says he needed and appreciated the EMT training he had received.
Kokanos was recognized by then Gov. Cecil Andrus for his volunteer work in 1990, one of a handful of volunteers recognized for their years of service. Kokanos had been with the Priest River Ambulance 19 years.
“I was really pleased when I heard,” he told The Gem State Miner at the time. “It really meant a lot to me.”
The West Pend Oreille Fire District and Priest River Ambulance isn’t the only agencies Kokanos had been involved with. He’d been chairman of the Priest River Planning Commission, a job he enjoyed. He was also elected to the Priest River City Council in 1979 by five votes.
“The day before (the election) they wrote me in,” he said. “I didn’t really want to do it.”
Kokanos said he only served a short time as a city councilor, about a year and a half.
Kokanos had to leave the Planning and Zoning position to serve on the city council. He left the city council to work on the fire district.
“I thought I could accomplish more there,” he said. Kokanos spent the next 40 years as a volunteer for the fire district. In that time, in addition to putting out fires, he’d helped gunshot victims and even delivered a baby.
Longtime volunteer Bill Davis, who had been with the district 22 years, said Kokanos was good to work with.
“We got along well,” Davis said. “He knew what he was doing.”
Kokanos was pretty sociable, he added. “It seems like he knew about everybody,” Davis said. Kokanos receives a stipend for his work, but says money wasn’t a motivation.
“I didn’t do it for the money.”
