In 1990, my best friend, Mike Wade and I decided that we would take our 12-year-old sons on a prairie dog hunt in Wyoming. We planned to spend 5 days shooting on BLM land and staying in remote, rural motels. Mike and his son, Justin, were driving a Toyota 4-Runner while I and my son, Travis, were in a Ford Bronco. On our third day out, we were traversing an off-grid gravel road somewhere between Baggs and Rawlins. Due to the road dust, I lagged about a half mile behind Mike as we drove to a new BLM plot. Reaching the summit of a steep incline I looked down the road to see Mike’s 4-Runner rolling over on its side perpendicular to the road in front of us. When it finally stopped rolling, Mike was lying about ten yards away from his vehicle, unconscious and face down in the gravel. Small puffs of dust were emanating from his exhaling straight down into the gravel. Justin, fortunately had been buckled in the vehicle and crawled out by the time we reached the scene, Mike having not fastened his seat belt wasn’t as lucky. This was the first time in my life that I was faced with a situation where every option of action was totally unacceptable. Even if I knew where I was exactly, I had two 12-year-old boys that couldn’t drive for help while I stayed with Mike. I couldn’t leave Mike laying in the middle of the road while I took the boys to look for help. Mike’s body was lying in an unnatural position attesting to a potential broken neck so picking him up and putting him in my vehicle wasn’t feasible. No option was viable. None.
It’s said that God watches out for drunks and fools; I’m not the former but may qualify as the latter. Either way, because of Divine intervention, there was a rancher and his wife working their cattle on a ridge about a half a mile away that saw the huge plume of dust caused by the vehicle rolling over multiple times and started their slow descent down to the road in their ranch truck. The rancher had a ham radio and was able to get EMT’s from Rawlins dispatched to our location. Upon examination in Rawlins, the doctors had Mike life-flighted to Casper. Mike didn’t survive the trip.
Mike had been a pivotal personality in my life. We met in college and started shooting and reloading together. We got married about the same time, had kids about the same time; my son’s middle name is “Wade.” Mike and I went to the first class ever held at the Chapman Academy and we went to Chapman’s first Advanced class ever held there. I got Mike and his father hooked on reading Jeff Cooper. His passing was the first great trauma of my life, exacerbated by my inability to influence the outcome.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does tend to desensitize the searing sting of grief, at least a little. Grief is an emotion but so is appreciation. That’s why a cognizant “remembrance” of comrades no longer with us is an opportunity to focus on appreciation instead of grief. Although doing things in remembrance of someone else is really for our own benefit, it’s fitting that the remembrance be something that our absent comrade would appreciate. Occasionally when I make a particularly good shot on a hunt, in a tournament or just when out plinking, I’ll save the empty brass and set it on Mike's tombstone in lieu of flowers. I’m certain that he’d appreciate that; I know that I would if our roles were reversed.
I realize that this is a particularly melancholy subject. However, the past 12 months have been tough for the Gun Writing industry mortality wise. Last June, we lost Mark Hampton and Duke Venturino. In October Phil Spangenberger passed away and earlier this month John Taffin stepped on a rainbow. I’ve been a fully committed gun magazine addict since the mid-1960’s and have been associated with the industry for 45 years and I can’t remember ever losing that many icons in such a concentrated time period. Although these four each appealed to somewhat different niches of the shooting fraternity, they all had one thing in common; they sparked the imagination of readers through the written word. Good writing that stimulates our imagination tends to stoke inner emotional fires that burn permanent records in our soul and spirit. Traditional remembrances such as a donation to a favored charity can be a great gesture but don’t forget to DO something that will feed YOUR soul and spirit: enter a shooting match that you wouldn’t have otherwise, shoot a specific type or caliber of firearm that your comrade would have appreciated, smoke their favorite cigar, drink their favorite libation, go to their favorite restaurant, read your favorite article that they wrote. It can be as simple as just stopping to visualize them standing beside you when you pull a trigger.
The key is to follow General Patton’s maxim: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”
— Greg Moats
