At schools and universities, celebrated alumni are memorialized with libraries, collections, laboratories, galleries and other facilities named for them.
Not many, though, have bicycle repair shops or programs that bear their names.
I must say, however, that few people would want to take the route to fame, if you will, of Sam Ozer.
Last year, days after his graduation from the AIM Academy in Philadelphia—where he was the co-captain of the mountain biking team—was riding along Henry Street when he was struck by a vehicle.
The fatal crash was accompanied by some terrible ironies: It was Fathers’ Day and he was going to spend time with his Dad, Sidney—who, along with Sam’s grandfather Morris, were founding members of the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia.
Even if he hadn’t been working at the Trek Manayunk Bicycle Shop on Main Street, Anne Rock, his cycling coach, would not have been exaggerating when she said bicycling was “in his blood.” His passion for cycling was accompanied by his love of the outdoors, which may have been inculcated by his mother, Mindy Maslin, the founder and program manager of Tree Tenders for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.
Thanks to her, her husband’s, Ms. Rock’s and other people’s efforts, Sam’s school will have a bicycle repair shop and program. Aside from commemorating the “grit” Ms. Maslin recalled in her only son, the shop and program are appropriate in another way: The AIM Academy is a school for intelligent and gifted kids with dyslexia, and bicycling and bike repair helped to put Sam Ozer on a road to becoming a confident adult. Before he graduated, he took two college courses and had been accepted in all six colleges to which he’d applied.
