A Hero

Gary was my colleague at the Contra Costa Times and before that, adored by my children who were young volunteers at the Lindsay Museum, as it was called in those days. So when we had a pet snake problem, I took it to Gary. My son’s boa had escaped its cage and slithered through a small hole into the wall behind our bathroom sink. Gary suggested capturing it with heat. He said to build a cardboard tunnel from the hole to a heating pad covered with an inverted box. I did. One, two, three days passed. Each morning, Gary asked about progress. Nothing, I’d say. He’d smile and shrug. And then, during the night I heard the pop of tape securing the cardboard tunnel give way. The bathroom door was closed, so I waited until morning. Then I found the snake, not on the heating pad, but wrapped around the sink drain pipe. The next morning I reported it to Gary, along with the tale of the broken cardboard passage. “Heh, heh, heh,” he chucked. “The snake found its way when it was ready.”

Thank you so much for the opportunity to come together with Gary's many old friends. You put together a wonderful event. Gary was very important to me growing up, in the days he was curator and all-around do-everything guy for the Alexander Lindsay Junior Museum. I have many happy memories of backpacking, climbing, and snow trips with Gary. I just wish more of the people from those days could have been there for the memorial service.

Greetings, I would like to express my thanks for the wonderful columns Gary wrote in the Times.  They were a wonderful example for me and my little girls.  We all learned so very much about animals and their habitats.  I credit those columns with giving my girls (now adults) a deeper understanding of and love for all sorts of animals.  They even used those columns to practice their reading.  Each had volunteered while in high school in shelters and my older daughter now works with Great Danes in a program teaching these wonderful dogs to assist people suffering with Parkinson’s. Gary Bogue leaves extraordinary memories and we are all grateful. The Holmberg Family