Remembering Bruce Rossmeyer

Sweetwater County, Wyoming---Earlier a motorcycle appeared behind me on interstate 80 the rider was poised in a crouched position as if ready to pass me. I had that instant feeling of being grateful that I had glanced at the rear view mirror before changing lanes and passing the trucker ahead of me. So I held position and waited. And waited.  I glanced at my side mirror and didn’t see him so I thought he was in my blind spot so I waited some more. But there was no one there.

Now I’m not a “seeing things” kind of person but I swear I saw a motorcycle behind me. I looked for any turnoff behind me...there were no side roads or exits. The road was long and straight and I could see for miles ahead and behind. I swear, lie-detector-swear, that I had seen a motorcyclist for a nano-second during my glance in my rear view mirror.

I was in a part of Wyoming that I was trying to decide whether or not I would take a side trip off 80 to a tiny highway in the middle of nowhere. A spot on the road that changed many lives forever. The spot where Bruce Rossmeyer was killed on his motorcycle by a motorist turning into him.

I know. All this seems weird. And I was not a “close friend”...I was not a part of his inner circle. My dilemma on going to the sight was that I felt like it was such a personal spot for the family and close friends, especially his friends that had ridden with him on July 30, 2009, that maybe I would be intruding.

Before I left for this coast to coast road trip,  I happened to run into two of his daughters separately. I told them each that my trip would take me very close and both said I should go. Then on the trip I happened to decide to drive through Vegas instead of my original plan and I happened to be there at the same time Beverly, his executive assistant and my first marathon partner was in Vegas with a friend. When we hooked up and I told her of my plan to maybe go to the spot, even that news sent the tone of our conversation feeling like a solemn heartache. We recalled the trip we had taken to Vegas and Bruce had given her some money to gamble for him, if we won we could split the difference with him.

Faster than I could say "What just happened," we had lost the money to the dealer. 

Now years later here we were again. So  just in case I did go, she gave me her MGM Hotel stir stick  out of her drink stuck though a dollar she folded into a bow and told me to leave it there. I kept it safely in my glove compartment.

Fast forward to today,  and I was near the exit for the side trip and I had just seen this weird motorcycle that didn’t exist so I said out loud “okay I’ll go.”

Bruce Rossmeyer  was bigger than life. To me, he was a client. To the United States, he was the owner Destination Daytona, a complex that included the largest Harley Davidson dealership in the country. To Boggy Creek Camp, a retreat for kids with chronic illnesses, he was their fundraising hero. To Beverly, he was her boss and her dear friend. To one person, he was the love of her life. And to 5 people, he was Dad.

He was a big man with a huge heart. With the kind of face that when he laughed his whole face laughed: it would turn red with eyes that squinted and smile lines that appeared to take over his face, followed by him running his fingers through his hair. He was loud...yet even if he would have whispered, people listened when he had something to say. He had not been given anything. He was the kind of business man that built his world from the ground up.

News of his accident sent shock waves through Daytona Beach, through the Sturgis Motorcycle event where he had been heading with his friends and through the world.

It made national news.

Now here, somewhere along this highway where the closest town has 300 people living there, his life ended. I started getting butterflies in my stomach and I felt I was close. Then there was a sign that had a broken heart with a dove. Below it, a cross, and a wreath.  I pulled off the highway, ran to it, looked and dropped to one knee. I was there. It was here...

I stood up and scanned the horizon. It was beautiful with snow covered mountains in the far distance. The only sound was occasional passing cars. Dried roses had blown a pedal scattered path through the sage brush. Tiny empty bottles of Crown Royal lay at the base.

People who had been there had written messages on the wooden post.  With a lump in my throat I walked back to my Hyundai to carefully get Beverly’s tribute and I decided impromptu to take my little plastic Hawaiian flowers that had been dangling from my mirror and leave them thinking of the year when Bruce’s “Champagne Ball” charity for Boggy Creek Camp was Hawaiian themed and he had donned a grass skirt as a dare. The memory made me smile.

I heard it said by people at the funeral that he died doing what he loved or that he was in a better place or that it was his time. Well I don’t buy that. Sure he built a life around the motorcycle business and loved it. But what he loved more was his family.  And the best place he could be is with them and the people devastated by his void. And no time would ever be “right” for this man.

I don’t know why I thought I saw a motorcycle behind me on the highway and I’m still a little confused by it. But it took me there.

Alone by the road, near the wide open fields of Wyoming, by his memorial, I thought of him and thanked him for everything he did for Daytona Beach, Florida.

He died there and he is missed. And what is left is a legacy.

State Crossing: Wyoming

Sights Along the Way: Utah

High School Musical was filmed here!

A Refugee Family's Second Chance.

Salt Lake City, Utah---“They say ‘She likes Americans we should kill her,” she said to me in a small apartment in Salt Lake City. “I leave with my children because everywhere is fighting, so much fighting.”

I look around this sparse apartment that she shares with her six children and a visiting Aunt and wonder why they are so happy with so little. There is only a map of the United States predominately taped to the wall by their table.

“I dream every night in the camp, I dream I am in America,” her dark brown eyes do not leave mine, “and now my dream is true!” she raises her hands above her head as in celebration.

The kids

The camp she is speaking of is the refugee camp in Ethiopia where she and these children, ages 18 to 8, spent five years after fleeing Somalia. Many families wait for years to be placed. Coming to America is like winning the lottery. All have one thing in mind, they just want to go to a safer place to work hard, raise their family and start a new life.

Without asking,  a daughter brings me and my cousin glasses of lemonade so full she walks very slowly watching the tops that are about to spill over.

Ethiopia, it turns out has the second largest refugee camp in the world with 170,000 Somali. Other countries have taken in more. Overall the number of Somali refugees in the region numbers more than 1 million.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agencies online news update, “Somalia remains one of the world's longest and worst refugee crises. A third of Somalia's estimated 7.5 million population lives in forced displacement – either as refugees or internally displaced people.”

I watch the kids run around excited to have visitors they are silly and funny and behave like, well, kids. My cousin Martha is a liaison for this family, a volunteer position through Catholic Community Services that she started after a battle with cancer that left her wanting to give back. This is the third family and she’s incredibly proud of them because of their progress. It is evident the mother loves Martha and that she has made a difference.

“When I first get here I get on the bus and know nothing so I just ride and ride,” the mother told me, “I was so confused. In the bush we have nothing like this. Here is all so big and so many things. So I stay on the bus and do not know what to do.”

“Then one day Martha comes. She says ‘let’s go ride the bus together’ and now I know. Two stop lights I get off, zip, zip, zip I am knowing it all now,” she said excited, “We love Martha, she is like Angel.”

Another daughter brings Martha and me each a piece of cake that together, would make up half the cake. I stare at the lemonade that I cannot finish and look at this huge mound of cake bewildered. There is an audience of the Aunt and several children on the sofa across from me staring to see my reaction. I am so full from an earlier lunch but take my fork and smile doing my best to take some bites. It’s very good, one of the daughters blushes as we compliment her baking.

I wanted to know more so later I found a good story from KSL.com Utah published March 7, 2013 and written by By Nkoyo Iyamba. The story states; "There are roughly 15 million refugees in the world and less than one percent will be resettled," explained Aden Batar, director of immigration and refugee resettlement at Catholic Community Services in Utah.  The United States Department of State reports a resettlement budget for roughly 70,000 refugees to be relocated to cities around the U.S. Utah refugee advocacy groups are resettling roughly 600 refugee families during the first part of the 2012-2013 fiscal year; that's already half the state's budgeted capacity.

The story continues to say; "A lot of the refugees, they don't want to live on welfare, I can attest to that," Batar said. "All they want is to provide for their families. About 70 percent of refugees that are resettled obtain jobs within the first 6 months of arrival to Utah."

This is true for this family. The oldest daughter has a full time cleaning job and is already helping to support the family.

This family are not United States citizens, they have a "permanent resident" status. The other children are all in school and plan to be in summer school to get a jump on more education. I watch my cousin ask to see school  paperwork for the summer term, add her name as an emergency contact and explain how they need to turn it in the next day.

I ask the mother how is it she speaks such good English and she immediately jumps up and goes into one of the bedrooms reappearing with a manila envelope. Sitting next to me on the sofa again, she pulls out paperwork and sorts out three laminated pieces of paper to show me.

I read two letters from the American Embassy in Somalia from 1991. It states that she had been a good janitor at the Embassy and also did some secretarial work. The third paper was a certificate for being “Employee of the Quarter” during her time there. She beams with pride over these treasures.

Now it all makes sense. She worked in our Embassy and this is why she first was known to “like the Americans.”  And working for, liking Americans is what first got her life threatened.

I did not ask about the father and husband. My cousin told me she hasn't asked yet either. Many men had been killed and many women and children were separated from the men while leaving the country. Even the Aunt now visiting was not known to be alive until reaching the USA and finding her on a search site.

There is so much more to their story that I did not have time, or feel comfortable asking about. But it was inspirational to see a family so appreciative of our country and so amazed at the life they had “won.”

 

State Crossing: Utah

State Crossing: Nevada Again