Benefield: Uber volunteer Stan Gow was ‘an impossible guy not to like’

Stan Gow was everywhere.

At Santa Rosa City Council meetings. At Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit meetings. At cleanup efforts along the Prince Memorial Greenway. Rolling through his beloved West End neighborhood.

Gow, a man who made a name for himself as a vocal and conscientious advocate for volunteerism and accessibility for all to public amenities, died May 7.

He was 69.

Gow became a quadriplegic nearly 40 years ago after a diving accident and spent the vast majority of his days since speaking out and showing up to advocate for wider access to all things for people of varying abilities.

“People like Stan are the glue that hold a community together,” Sonoma County Supervisor Chris Coursey said. “Stan showed up. For as difficult as it has to be in that situation to get around, he got around. He showed up at meetings. He was at the table. But his personality was really low key. He was just an impossible guy not to like.”

Coursey was on the Santa Rosa City Council in 2016 when the city honored Gow with the Community Service Award for his years of volunteerism and advocacy.

One of Gow’s enduring legacies are the First Saturday Cleanups he launched around 2007.

An avid user and admirer of the greenway and its lengthy pathways along the Santa Rosa Creek, Gow had long been protective of the system. And in about 2007, he got organized about it.

He began gathering volunteers once a month to clear and look after the Prince Memorial Greenway just two blocks from his home.

Volunteers bring snacks and good cheer, and tools and gloves are provided. The work days have drawn as many as 75 people on some Saturdays and have been a mainstay for some volunteers for years.

The effort is supported by Santa Rosa and the Sonoma Water Agency, but it continues to thrive because of Gow’s enthusiastic army of volunteers, said Alistair Bleifuss, a recently-retired environmental specialist with the city’s creek stewards program.

“He was a great ambassador,” he said. “Stan pulled it off. He brought in others: Chop”s (Teen Club) was there to run things, Boy Scouts — he got the community involved.”

“He showed that with just a little support from public agencies that neighbors and others and volunteers can make our city and parks and Santa Rosa that much better,” he said.

His energy and his commitment to serving others was unflagging, despite multiple and ongoing health issues, friends said.

He would live and observe, reporting back on things that worked, on things that didn’t, for people with any kind of mobility issues or disabilities.

He visited every park in Santa Rosa, making sure that where he wanted to go in his chair, he could.

And that spirit got him into binds sometimes.

“He was always getting himself stuck places,” longtime friend and West End neighbor Deborah Crippen said. “He didn’t see a lot of limits. More than once I had to try to figure out how get his chair out because he’s get bogged down somewhere.”

Carole Quandt came to know Gow after both were members of the city’s Board of Community Services. His energy at the dais matched in his energy out and about, she said.

“I had to yell because I couldn’t keep up with him,” she said, laughing. “He’d be a bat out of hell in that chair and he tipped it a couple of times. The Stan I saw rarely let his disabilities sit in his way.”

But the Gow Quandt knew could also slow things down and focus on what was important. He kept perspective.

“I’d go into a tizzy, everything was a crisis for me,” she said. “He would laugh and say, ‘Oh that is such bullsh**.’”

Gow had been around the block. He didn’t tend to get too riled.

“He said, ‘Pick your battles wisely. Is it really worth putting all your cards down on this one?’” she said.

But make no mistake, Gow was a fighter.

“He had only had one hand that kind of moved, but Stan was larger than life,” Quandt said.

That fighting spirit was there growing up, too, his brother Bill Gow of Roseburg, Oregon, said.

“We used to argue like cats and dogs,” Bill Gow said. “If he got something stuck in his mind he was bull headed about it. But he did some good there I guess. He tried to make Santa Rosa a better place for quads and people in general.”

Gow was the oldest of four kids who grew up poor and moved from Central California to Southern Oregon.

He bounced around after high school but found his groove in his late 20s as a house framer in the summer and a ski instructor in the winter. He was constantly active, his brother said.

After the diving accident, Gow was transferred to California to receive emergency care and then rehabilitation. He never left.

“He was well known in his community, always involved in community stuff. Everywhere he went, he was always looking for better access for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act),” Bill Gow said. “He was really good person that way. It kept his mind occupied.”

Crippen described her longtime friend as both friendly and cranky — depending on the day and/or the topic of conversation.

“He was outgoing, talks to everyone, has a story for everybody,” she said. “At the same time he was a curmudgeon.”

A stubborn curmudgeon.

Coursey met Gow back when Coursey worked for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit. Before trains were ever running, Gow was at meetings advocating for access and equal services.

“He was involved as a future rider of SMART and was kind of instrumental in helping us figure out the best ways to accommodate people in wheelchairs and people with other disabilities,” he said. “At the time, SMART was a long way off and it was iffy, so he was doing this for himself but he was really doing it for people sometime in the future, and that was the kind of guy Stan was.”

Quandt said the last time she saw Gow, after he’d spent a stint in the hospital, was, fittingly, on Earth Day at an event in downtown Santa Rosa.

They greeted each other and Quandt introduced Gow to a new city employee who worked in park maintenance.

Gow pounced and pressed the man about what the city was doing to save an ailing walnut tree in DeMeo Park.

That park is where a celebration of Gow’s life will be held at 1 p.m. June 19.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.