Gentle giants: Creighton Kooch walks alongside his 5-year-old Clydesdale, Jenna. (Observer file photo 2004).

– Gary Fletcher

– The Observer

ENTERPRISE Wallowa County lost a prominent figure Tuesday.

Creighton Burl Kooch died at the age of 66. He was born Sept. 7, 1940, in Enterprise.

Kooch stood out in several ways. At 6-foot-3 and 180 pounds, he was an imposing figure.

"Everybody knew him," his wife, Cheryl, said.

He was probably best known recently for his 25 head of giant black Clydesdale horses along Highway 82 on the eastern outskirts of Enterprise.

A 1958 graduate of Enterprise High School, he was an all-around athlete.

With his own dominating yet graceful style he helped lead the EHS basketball team to the state playoffs in 1958 with a 28-1 record. The one loss came in the first game of the state tournament to the eventual winner, Star of the Sea of Astoria. Enterprise won the rest of its games to claim the consolation title.

In football Kooch played what is now called tight end. He was selected to play in the East-West Shrine All-Star Game in 1958.

In track, a classmate remembers Kooch setting two records at EHS. One stood for nearly a quarter of a century. It was the 110-yard high hurdles, which he set in 1958. It was broken in 1982 by John Pratt.

Kooch was also an EHS boxer.

"He was such a graceful athlete and a graceful dancer," Cheryl said.

Daughter Kris Sterns of Yakima added, "Cheryl and all the girls loved to dance with him."

The most significant thing that Cheryl remembers about him is that he was always a gentleman.

Creighton and Cheryl were together 22 years.

At his last class reunion, Kooch won the "Blooming Where You Are Planted" award, she said.

"He figured a way to live here," she said about his 40 or so years as a mason.

Among his many masonry projects are the recent Toma’s building expansion, and Warde Park in downtown Enterprise. Kooch built both with Fred Hauptman.

Kooch was also mentoring his grandson, Nathen Riste, 22, of Yakima in the art of masonry.

"Anything that Creighton did, he did it well," Cheryl recalled Grady Rawls of Joseph telling her.

"Yes, right down to the plumbing," daughter Kim Riste of Seattle said.

Sterns remembers a visit home last September.

"When we arrived, he had all the parts laid out in order to install an underground sprinkler system,” she said. "We didn’t have to stop and go to the store for a thing.

"Whenever the family got together there was a work project."

In addition to his devotion to family and work, there were the Clydesdales.

About 25 years ago Kooch went up to Montana and bought a team of black Clydesdales. He was the first to bring that breed into Wallowa County.

He competed in draft horse competitions and parades from Oregon and Washington to Canada.

Cheryl said that rancher Wayne Cook of Enterprise told her Creighton was the only person he knew of that could drive six horses down a parade route and all that the big animals heard was what Creighton said to them either a kiss-type sound or "Chief.”

Chief is the 23-year-old gelding that was Kooch’s favorite horse of all time. "He was Creighton’s soulmate," Cheryl said.

The family asks that in lieu of flowers, contributions in his memory be made to Wallowa Memorial Hospital.

The funeral will begin at 1 p.m. Friday at the First Baptist Church in Enterprise. An obituary will be published later.