This year’s Sojourners range in age from 14 months to 87.
Dark-eyed, often-smiling, and just starting to walk, Sofia is experiencing her first Sojourn with her parents, Keith Dickerson and Teresa Keating, two of our volunteer staff. Sofia is traveling some of the time on the towpath in a bicycle trailer pulled by one of her parents. But for the most part, she has been lulled to sleep in our support van. Teresa and Keith take turns driving the van while the other cycles. I caught Sofia on camera curiously inspecting the stuffed giraffe on the back of one Sojourner’s recumbent bike the first day. I shared lunch with the threesome Sunday and observed as she practiced her first major athletic accomplishment, learning to walk. Today, which was a hot one, she was laughing as Teresa let her play under a hose in the park in Hancock, Md., our lunch stop. It looks like she’s off to a great start on a healthy, active lifestyle.
This morning during breakfast I had a chance to chat with Bill Grun, 87, our oldest rider. Bill, who has cycled with us on all our Greenway Sojourns, has a delightful wit, an interest in others and a compelling story of his own. Not surprisingly, I heard from someone that he’s working on his autobiography. He confirmed that he is, “but the problem is I’m so busy! I only allow myself an hour on the computer a day.” At six single-spaced pages, he says he’s about half through writing it and that he’s “had a wonderful life.”
A retired industrial arts teacher, Bill is hardly resting on his laurels. He still volunteers one day a week teaching mechanical drawing and technology at a middle school near his home—which he built himself 53 years ago in Warrington, Pa. He’s made several 3-month trips to Florida to help rebuild homes as disaster relief and still goes a week at a time to Mississippi for the same purpose. And he makes time to indulge his love of cycling.
“When I retired from teaching in 1980, one of my objectives was to do bicycle touring,” he says. “I got my first ten-speed and took it on tour in Acadia National Park. I went on my own at first; later my daughter joined me." His longest tour was a present to himself for his 75th birthday. He joined a supported bike tour for seven days and rode from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. “It was glorious! At the end the ride leader, who’d been watching me the whole trip, said, ‘You really surprised me. When I heard a 75-year-old was coming on this trip, I thought I’d have to be babysitting you.”
Bill says he’s “always had a bicycle…” He earned his first one at age 13 selling magazines door-to-door in 1933. “The magazine cost a dime, and from that dime I got three cents and also earned coupons toward prizes. I saved them up. The bike was 973 coupons.” It was a single-speed, and he must have ridden it a lot. “I wore that bike out,” he reports. It had soft soldering and eventually the frame fell apart.”
Certain themes run through Bill’s life—being proactive and self-sufficient, among them. “My mother died when I was fourteen, which was a disaster. But I realized from that, that the buck stops here. Even as a kid I always had a job. It was the Depression, and my dad didn’t have extra money to give me.”
He offers the story of his World War II navy years for an example. He wanted to be a carpenter’s mate because he knew he wanted to teach industrial arts after the war was over. How he did it is a story of speaking up about his ambition and not being afraid to offer his services to the officer in charge, of honing his skills and finding ways to put them to use. But I’m running out of space and time. You’ll have to ask Bill, if you meet him, or read about it in his autobiography.
Susan Weaver
