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PRIEST RIVER — It’s not always a sound idea to go into business with family, but for Cliff Ackerman, the official Bull of The Woods for this year’s Priest River Timber Days celebration, it was a natural progression.
“I just loved it,” Cliff says of working in his father Lyle’s logging business since he was 16. “I know it may sound unusual, but I can’t remember my dad and I ever having a fight while working together. Sometimes it was testy, but we could always talk stuff out.”
Lyle and Cliff’s mother, Vida, moved their three children, including Cliff, from Moscow, Idaho to Priest River when Cliff was in junior high school. The Ackermans already had deep roots in the area with Ackerman’s grandfather also having been a logger and a bootlegger, running liquor to Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps around Priest Lake. When he started working with his father Cliff started on the basics, splitting fence posts for $10 a day before progressing up to inheriting Ackerman Logging from Lyle in the mid-1960s. Cliff and his wife of 60-years, Jeanie, have lived in the Bonner County area their whole lives, raising their three daughters and working together in the family business, turning it into Ackerman Logging and Excavating after adding a dump truck and excavator to their equipment in 1967. Jeanie was the secretary and bookkeeper.
“It can be a bit of a challenge to get loggers to get their timecards in on time,” Jeanie says, smiling.
The couple’s daughters, Sandy, Sheri and Jamie, started working in the business as children, accompanying their father out into the woods and clearing rocks out of the roads to make way for the logging grader.
“We actually liked it because we got to hang out with dad and he would teach us how to drive the grader,” Sandy says. “So much of who we are today is thanks to dad’s work ethic.”
Jeanie and Cliff, who started dating in the eighth grade, lived at Priest Lake for 45 years before building their current home in Priest River. At the height of the business, the Ackermans employed 40 people. Cliff closed the venture after retiring two years ago. He still enjoys doing projects with his excavator and occasionally going on an excursion in the forest or to an alpine lake with the family pack mules and yellow lab, Georgie. Cliff and Jeanie also enjoy spending time with their daughters and their families, which includes four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“Logging has changed a lot since my grandpa and father did it, and for the better,” Cliff says. “It’s so much safer than it was. It’s more mechanized now. Of course, you still have to be aware and be safe, but the risks are a lot lower.”
When asked, Cliff estimates that he’s made millions of board feet throughout his career.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you an exact number, but it’s been a lot,” Ackerman says.
Cliff’s family and Liz Johnson-Gebhardt of Priest Community Forest Connection nominated Cliff for Bull of The Woods, the official emcee of the annual Timber Days festivities, Friday-Saturday, July 26-27. The Priest River Chamber of Commerce selected Cliff as the 37th “Bull.”
“We talked before about nominating him, but he was always shy of the limelight, he didn’t want a bunch of attention on him,” Sandy says. “This year we decided to go for it.”
Timber Days has always been an event Cliff and his family look forward to.
“It was around when I was born and that was 75 years ago, though they called it logger days then,” Jeanie says.
The celebrations used to be much rowdier with drinking and brawling according to the Ackermans, but it never turned malicious.
“You had a bunch of loggers blowing off steam,” Cliff says. “There would most likely be a black eye or a split lip, but people would shake hands afterwards and were quick to forget what the fight was even about. You might even buy each other a drink afterward.”
Cliff says he appreciates the honor of being part of an event that has meant a lot to him and his family and the community at large.
“We’re going to have fun, and I hope other people enjoy it too.”
