Coming right on the heels of the sad news about Trail Angel Gillian Hoggard, who lost her home to a fire this week, is a plea for help for Cookie Lady June Curry.
Neil Gunton, host of the Crazy Guy on a Bike website, writes that mounting medical and other bills for June has forced her to sell her house in Afton, Virginia.
He's setting up a special Cookie Lady PayPal donation site on CrazyGuy so the thousands of us who enjoyed her kindness over the years can contribute to her well-being now.
I don't know about you, but reading about the Cookie Lady always brings back a flood of memories from a hot afternoon on Afton hill with a loaded touring bike. The photo above was taken the day we passed through in 1984.
If you didn't receive it, here's the newsletter Neil sent via email:
June Curry (The Cookie Lady of Afton, Virginia) Needs Our Help!
This is an unusual newsletter, but I decided to send it because June is a rather unusual lady. She's been running the Cookie House in Afton, Virginia since the inception of the TransAmerica Trail in 1976, giving touring cyclists a roof over their head, food and water through the decades. Now she has fallen on harder times in her later years, suffering a stroke, and has even had to sell her house to stay afloat. She isn't getting enough help to pay for the assistance she needs. So I decided to try something: A little fundraising drive for the Cookie Lady. I've set up a special email address for paypal donations, cookielady@crazyguyonabike.com. Also, to make it easy, there is a special button at the bottom of the usual donation page on crazyguyonabike. Go here to donate:
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/website/sponsors/donate/#cookielady
I know we all see a thousand please for money come through our mailboxes every day. I guess I just think this one is special, because June is not an organization, she's just an individual who decided to dedicate her life to helping others, in particular touring cyclists. As she nears her later years on this earth, it would be nice if we as a group could come together and manage to send her some appreciation to help her cope with the aftermath of the stroke. Everything that comes into that paypal account (minus Paypal's usual fees) will go to June. You can also send me checks (my address is on the donation page) but if you do that then please make them payable to June Curry, and I will forward them to her.
I won't do this very often, if only because there aren't very many people like her! So if you can, this is the time to give something back to the Cookie Lady of Afton, Virginia.
Thanks!
Neil Gunton
Webmaster
www.crazyguyonabike.com
When my friend and I passed through Afton on our cross-country trip, we had a nice chat with June, who passed along news she thought we should know about the upcoming TransAmerica route.
Always thinking of others, she wanted us to stop in on Lazy Louie on the route through Missouri. Louie ran a bicycle camp right on the TransAmerica bike route for cross-country cyclists. She had heard that he'd suffered a stroke but was still up and around and she wanted to make sure the bikers all stopped in to wish him well.
Twenty-one years later it was June who suffered the stroke, and later a bad fall that broke her wrist. She's needed help to keep the Afton bicycle house going ever since.
One thing the Cookie Lady did for every visitor is have them sign their name in a logbook and pose for a Polaroid photograph. Joe and Susan Bousquet, Hank Raines, and Mike Riscica have been downloading those pictures to the Cookie House Registry at CrazyGuyonaBicycle. If you ever visited, you'll probably find yourself there.
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