Gary Rounds
Gary Rounds
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Age: 54
Location:
Apple Capital Recreational Trail
Wenatchee , WA
United States
Gary crashed into another cyclist on the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail and later died of his injuries according to this article.
But he died doing something he loved, according to the Seattle Times, and his friends wanted to honor
that. For a potluck celebration of Rounds' life, members of his
Wenatchee Alcoholics Anonymous group prepared the "ghost bike," painted
white and garlanded with mementos: feather tokens, a dreamcatcher,
flowers.
Rounds struggled with alcoholism throughout his life, finally
achieving an extended sobriety that started about 10 months before his
death, said his sister, Theresa Luce of Wenatchee. When she inherited
his journals after his death, they were thick with praise for his fellow
AA participants.
"That was like his extended family, and they are the ones that wanted
to honor him," Luce said. "He was known for riding his bike, everywhere
he went. It was an association - you talked about Gary, you talked
about bicycles, you talked about his Native beliefs."
Rounds, born and raised in Wenatchee, was a member through his
mother's family of the Westbank First Nation in the Okanagan region of
Canada. A committed cyclist, he was known to pedal throughout the
Wenatchee Valley and travel as far as Oroville, where relatives on his
father's side lived.
EAST WENATCHEE — The Ghost Bike, a memorial along the east side of
the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail to a fallen rider, is back in
place after vandals threw it down the hill into some brush by the
Columbia River.
Alerted to the bike’s disappearance by frequent trail user Richard
Martin, A World reporter called Joel Bender, maintenance supervisor for
Eastmont Parks.
Bender headed down to the trail Wednesday to investigate, looked down
the steep hillside along the shoreline and spotted the bike, which was
upside down and barely visible, its handlebars close to the waterline.
A parks crew headed down Thursday morning with a boom truck to
retrieve the bike. They leaned it back against the giant poplar where it
has been since 2009.
“It has some special meaning, and I wanted to make sure that if we
could find it, we could get it back to where it needed to be,” Bender
said.
Gary Rounds, a American Indian artist and avid cyclist, was riding
the bike in September 2009, when he collided with another rider about a
quarter-mile north of the Pipeline pedestrian bridge. Rounds suffered a
severed spine. He died days later at Seattle’s Harborview Medical
Center.
His friends from Wenatchee’s Alano Club recovered the bike, painted
it a ghostly white and placed it along the trail, against the poplar, at
the scene of the accident. It’s been there ever since. Flowers, U.S.
flags, ribbons and garland, kept fresh by family and friends, adorn the
tree trunk around it.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Age: 54
Location:
Apple Capital Recreational Trail
Wenatchee , WA
United States
Gary crashed into another cyclist on the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail and later died of his injuries according to this article.
But he died doing something he loved, according to the Seattle Times, and his friends wanted to honor
that. For a potluck celebration of Rounds' life, members of his
Wenatchee Alcoholics Anonymous group prepared the "ghost bike," painted
white and garlanded with mementos: feather tokens, a dreamcatcher,
flowers.
Rounds struggled with alcoholism throughout his life, finally
achieving an extended sobriety that started about 10 months before his
death, said his sister, Theresa Luce of Wenatchee. When she inherited
his journals after his death, they were thick with praise for his fellow
AA participants.
"That was like his extended family, and they are the ones that wanted
to honor him," Luce said. "He was known for riding his bike, everywhere
he went. It was an association - you talked about Gary, you talked
about bicycles, you talked about his Native beliefs."
Rounds, born and raised in Wenatchee, was a member through his
mother's family of the Westbank First Nation in the Okanagan region of
Canada. A committed cyclist, he was known to pedal throughout the
Wenatchee Valley and travel as far as Oroville, where relatives on his
father's side lived.
EAST WENATCHEE — The Ghost Bike, a memorial along the east side of
the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail to a fallen rider, is back in
place after vandals threw it down the hill into some brush by the
Columbia River.
Alerted to the bike’s disappearance by frequent trail user Richard
Martin, A World reporter called Joel Bender, maintenance supervisor for
Eastmont Parks.
Bender headed down to the trail Wednesday to investigate, looked down
the steep hillside along the shoreline and spotted the bike, which was
upside down and barely visible, its handlebars close to the waterline.
A parks crew headed down Thursday morning with a boom truck to
retrieve the bike. They leaned it back against the giant poplar where it
has been since 2009.
“It has some special meaning, and I wanted to make sure that if we
could find it, we could get it back to where it needed to be,” Bender
said.
Gary Rounds, a American Indian artist and avid cyclist, was riding
the bike in September 2009, when he collided with another rider about a
quarter-mile north of the Pipeline pedestrian bridge. Rounds suffered a
severed spine. He died days later at Seattle’s Harborview Medical
Center.
His friends from Wenatchee’s Alano Club recovered the bike, painted
it a ghostly white and placed it along the trail, against the poplar, at
the scene of the accident. It’s been there ever since. Flowers, U.S.
flags, ribbons and garland, kept fresh by family and friends, adorn the
tree trunk around it.