Terry Bingham Memorial

Readers — As reported in the August 29 edition of ‘Lectronic, cruiser Terry Bingham passed away from complications due to pancreatitis in a Bolivian hospital.

On Saturday, good friends Holly Serdy and Rob Lemmon hosted a "Celebration of Terry Bingham’s Life" that was attended by more than 60 people. Holly and Rob produced a DVD of Terry’s life, showing photos from his youth, and then of course hundreds of photos from his travels. We watched it at least twice, and lots of Kleenex was passed around.

Terry and I met while cycling in August 1995, on a two-day ride from Seattle to Vancouver, BC. Three of our fellow cyclists who were with us that fated weekend were in attendance yesterday. I’m so glad they could all be here as cycling was a very big part of Terry’s life until his real love, sailing aboard Secret O’Life, came into his life. Also in attendance were some fellow sailors, many of whom are current or former cruisers we met in or en route to Mexico. Several more dear cruiser friends at Bahia de Caraquez joined us via Skype.

I’m busy helping to put together a memorable day on Sunday, October 5, when we will scatter most of Terry’s ashes in Puget Sound near Eagle Harbor. We are going to have a small boat parade — so far we have two motoryachts and two or three sailboats signed up. All of Terry’s children and grandchildren will be flying in for the occasion and I know we will fill up the boats with those who knew and loved Terry. We are going to save a small portion of Terry’s ashes to take back to Secret O’Life and scatter there in Bahia de Caraquez.

He would have been overwhelmed at the turnout. For all of Terry’s confidence and bravado, he was a very humble guy. I know he didn’t think he was all that special — it was a very endearing quality — but he is so missed and lovingly remembered by many.