Park group founder promises more to come

Dave Downey’s handiwork is all over Kalispell’s Lawrence Park.

As he sits at a picnic table there, he tells stories about all the different features, most of which he had a hand in developing.

He talks about how the playground equipment was built and who helped. He points to the hilltop where a small stand marks the Bayliss Cummings Memorial Viewing Area. Downey replaced the plastic covering on the plaque himself.

Then he looks at the main pavilion, which was raised with the help of volunteer labor that Downey’s group, Friends of Lawrence Park, assembled.

He motions toward the large, wooden trusses of the pavilion.

“I held those in place while they were securing them,” Downey said.

Downey, 83, has been the president of Friends of Lawrence Park since 1985, when he and a few friends looked to turn an old dumping space into something more useful.

He worked to improve the park over the next 30 years, a role that overlapped and succeeded his long tenure as a local dentist.

A lot has changed in Kalispell since he arrived in 1957. Downey has interacted with that historical record, in one way or another. The man who built his house worked on the Hungry Horse Dam, a project that helped push Kalispell’s population to over 10,000.

Other interactions were more concrete, and the nearly 80-acre green space of Lawrence Park serves as evidence.

The reward for Downey as he sits at that picnic table is just to assess the scene. A parent throws an oversized Frisbee to her young daughter. Three musicians play violins as other people bask in the warm May sun.

“I just get the nicest feeling,” he said. “It’s so relaxing seeing people down here enjoying it.”

DOWNEY IS a native of Spokane, Washington. He took to odontology at an early age and attended dental school at the University of Washington in Seattle.

After college, he served in the U.S. Air Force as a dentist. And after he was discharged, Downey and his wife were split between Bozeman and Kalispell as places to make their lives.

Downey said after a quick visit to Northwest Montana, the decision was easy. They chose Kalispell.

Montana drew him in with visual beauty, but he also was interested in the people. He saw a self-reliant ethos and a hard-working streak in the residents.

“Montanans have a fierce pride in their state,” Downey said.

Downey practiced dentistry in Kalispell for 45 years, with one main interruption. In 1968 he began a two-year residency in Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka, as a university dental professor for Project Hope.

At the time, medical access wasn’t always available for the more than 10 million residents. He guessed there were around 200 dentists in the country, which would have meant one doctor per 50,000 residents.

Downey gave clinical lectures and loved to see his students putting his teachings to work. After his first year of work ended, he signed up for another stint and brought his family over.

He returned to Kalispell in 1970 and resumed his practice, which had been covered by a colleague. He and his wife raised five kids in their home near the Conrad Mansion.

In the early 1980s, Buffalo Hill Golf Course considered adding nine holes on an old pit next to its land. The site had been a sort of dirty storage ground for the city over the years.

“In 1940, they used it for gravel excavation and fuel dumping,” Kalispell Parks and Recreation Director Chad Fincher said.

The city stopped dumping fuel there in 1975. A decade later, Downey and some friends decided they wanted to lobby for a park instead of a golf annex.

“We worked for six or eight years to try to get it,” Downey said.

That’s how Friends of Lawrence Park began. Downey joked that there were no golfers in the group at that time, as there was some competition in securing the site. But he recalled his group had the support of a few Kalispell City Council members.

They succeeded, and in 1991 the city started to reclaim the gravel pit and develop a master plan for a park. The main pavilion went up in 1995, with Downey bracing the uprights.

Since then, Friends of Lawrence Park has lobbied to secure playground equipment, bathroom facilities and overall upgrades to the site.

They’ve relied largely on private donations, but have received lots of help from the city and other groups such as Rotary and Lions clubs. It’s become a communitywide project in the heart of town.

And Downey, who has chaired the Friends ever since, has seen the process at every step.

“It’s everything that we originally established as a goal,” he said.

AFTER SITTING on the picnic table for a while, Downey got up and briskly walked the length of the grounds.

While talking about the addition of the disc golf course, he’s also looking ahead to the next project. They’re putting in new swings this year as the result of a large, anonymous donation. He said a current boulder park proposal would make a great addition.

Downey retired from his dental practice in 2001, but the Lawrence Park work has been ongoing. He talks about it like his own little pet project, but it’s a large city asset for everyone to patronize.

At the end of the trail, past the historical section around Noffsinger Spring, he looks out over the Stillwater River. It’s as if he’s mentally reaching out in search of the next expansion plan.

And that’s his view of Lawrence Park. It doesn’t cease improving. Without revealing any details, he leans in and hints at the future.

“We’ve got big plans, too,” Downey said.

Reporter Matt Hudson may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mhudson@dailyinterlake.com.