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There was a celebration of sorts at the Ferguson Ridge ski run last Sunday. We remembered Harold Klages (gone for a year), who reached back to Eagle Cap Ski Club days on the old hill on the west moraine and maybe back further, when club members would pack Sunday lunches and head for a hill, pack the snow by sidestepping up and then ski down. I picture Harold, hunched over his skis, making tight, carved turns and helping plan and engineer Fergi those years ago.

And we remembered Ken Bronec, a quiet man and one of the smoothest telemark skiers in the country a giver who put in many ski patrol and backcountry ski hut hours, and who, years ago on a given night could rip the town team basketball nets as effortlessly and quietly as he skied and talked. Ken was involved with a Wallowa County history class at the Josephy Center this winter, and we had no notion of pain or waning days.

Its been a hard summer. Im almost afraid to make a list, as Ill surely forget someone important (my brother-in-law in Sacramento, ten years my junior, also passed this year). I cant forget Betty Tippett, because her recent service at the Baptist church was a fine one. And I remember her calling to thank me for writing a piece about Biden and Casey moving cows across the highway at Eggleson Corner. I liked Casey on a four-wheeler and Biden on a four-legged doing the seasonal work theyd done forever. Betty said an out-of-towner driving a fancy car had complained about some of the fresh leavings of Tippett cows kicking up from tires to the bumpers and paint on his Mercedes. We both had a good laugh.

Gene Thiel Gene Gene the Potato Machine slipped away on us too. Thats what they called him at all the top restaurants and at the Saturday Market in Portland. His organic potatoes and carrots were famous you know Genes carrots are organic, because theyre half dirt, offered a well-known city food critic. She was hyping local foods, and giving everyone in her audience a Thiel carrot and a hunk of chocolate. Gene got a fine Catholic mass, and St. Peter the fisherman must have been smiling. Farm, fish, and family and poems about all of above were Genes things.

Years and years ago, Margaret Bear Boyd was one of my best bookstore customers. Bear didnt keep her views hidden one of her best Seattle high school friends had been sent off to a Japanese intern camp during World War II, and that old government action irked her still. She talked about it like it was yesterday, but she had a big laugh too, and it was hard not to laugh with her.

If you are on Facebook, find what Jim Zacharias wrote about Steve Isley. Theres no way I can match his words about Steve falling and always getting up and if the rest of us got up as willfully and uncomplainingly every time we fell down or got knocked down wed all be better people. That and Steves riding his bicycle and many conversations on the road between Joseph and Enterprise stay with me.

And I almost forgot Ida Hillock, another bookstore customer, Red Hat lady, champion Homemaker at the County Fair, white-haired friend in the back pew at the Big Brown Church. There are others, there are others

The easy one to let go should be Gardner Locke, because he was 94 and had been ailing for some time. And there were some chuckles and laughs at the ski run celebration people talking about the engineering it took to build the T-Bar, the parties it took to build the runs, and the cooperation that Gardner fostered among us all. Son Barney emceed, and nephews and nieces talked about their favorite uncle, and Dr. Russ Roundy said that through high school and college and medical school Gardner Locke was the best teacher hed ever had. Gardner never gave him an answer, but sent him back with the tools to find one.

No one even mentioned how we bought the danged place Fergi, that is how we paid a lawyer $300 to tell us that there was no way anyone but the bank could buy the property at a sheriffs sale they had liens on it but Gardner thought hed go to the sale anyway. And, sure enough, there were other bidders and the bank wasnt going to get it but Gardner did. And then he called a bunch of us and told us wed bought a ski run property and we would have to figure out how to pay for it. And we did, in large part due to Gardners gentle guidance.

Gardner and Tappy were some of the first people I met here 42 years ago. I was just back from the Peace Corps, and they were just going. They came home, and Gardners support has sustained me in many ways ever since. He once told me Id never left the Peace Corps. When I mentioned that to his son, Steven, he said that the same was true of his dad. Ive never felt more proud.

Main Street columnist Rich Wandschneider directs the Alvin M. and Betty Josephy Library of Western History and Culture housed at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture, located in Joseph.