©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mt. Airyite’s ‘Silence Ride’ honors tragic victims
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

John Siemiarowski of Mt. Airy stands on the steps of the Art Museum with daughter, Leah, as the vigil candle commemorating those killed in bicycle accidents is lit at Philadelphia’s first Ride of Silence on Wednesday, May 17. (Photos by Krikstin Pazulski)

All that was audible was the clicking of gears and the distant roar of the city as about 300 cyclists followed East Mount Airy’s John Siemiarowski away from the steps of the Art Museum for Philadelphia’s first-ever “Ride of Silence.”

“We accomplished what we set out to do,” said Siemiarowski after the event. That accomplishment was a message echoed throughout the nation and in eight other countries where Rides of Silence took place: to raise awareness that cyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as motorists on the road and to commemorate those who have died or been injured in bicycle/motorcycle accidents.

Siemiarowski, the co-organizer of Philadelphia’s first Ride of Silence on Wednesday, May 17, led the ride alongside co-organizer Ray Scheinfeld and executive director of the Bicycle Coalition for Greater Philadelphia, Alex Doty. Siemiarowski rode a two-seated recumbent tandem bicycle, with the seat behind him empty, symbolic of the riders who could not join him in the ride for awareness.

During the opening ceremonies, Siemiarowski was joined by his 21-year-old daughter, Leah, as he tearfully recounted his own loss from a bicycle accident – the death of his friend Maurice Attie.

Fourteen years ago this May, Attie was riding along then-West River Drive when he was struck by a drunk driver, who was also high and was swerving on and off the road. Siemiarowski said his friend flipped over the car, and his head hit the car’s roof so hard that the logo on his helmet was imprinted on its roof.

“In less than the time it will take me to read this,” said Siemiarowski through tears, “countless lives were changed, and none for the better.”

Siemiarowski sported a black band on his left arm for his friend Attie, and bands were distributed to many of the riders. He said Attie’s accident did not change his riding habits. He’s been riding since he was a child and now bikes 30 to 100 miles a week. Last year he participated in the Ride of Silence in Glenside in the same two-seater with the symbolic empty seat, but wanted to bring it to center city so that more people would see it.

“It’s been inside of me for a long time, and this is an opportunity to express it and try to make it safer to all cyclists,” Siemiarowski told the Local before the opening ceremony.

Siemiarowski, 51, said he was making a statement in his 20s by sporting a helmet and riding while most of his friends drove cars. “My statement would be that I was a legitimate user of the roads,” he said. “I tend towards small, often obscure statements. … Tonight, I want to make a larger statement, and with the help of all of you, we are going to make a very large statement.”

Siemiarowski is no stranger to bicycle accidents himself, having been hit at least three times by cars, one of which kept him off the bike for eight months while he recovered from a loss of skin from his ankle to his hip on the left leg. “I was moving around, but it was not comfortable.”

Peter Schneider, 50, a lawyer from West Mt. Airy, rode in the Ride of Silence on Wednesday. His goal was to “get the city to take measures to protect bikers from cars.” He rides his bike to work in North Philadelphia every day.

Dave Miller, 52, a medical technologist from Conshohocken, has been commuting via bike for 36 years. “I think about those hit, hurt, maimed,” said Miller, who considers himself lucky having been hit only once and survived numerous near-misses.

East Falls’ John York, 40, a radiologist at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson Medical Center, commutes to work almost every day of the week and was riding through the city Wednesday evening to commemorate a friend’s father, who was killed while riding in North Philadelphia last summer.

The common thread that binds all the Rides of Silence across the nation is the memories of the loved ones, friends and co-workers who have been injured or killed, said the city’s Randy Giancaterino. These lost lives are symbolically present through the white “ghost bike” that Giancaterino said is present at all Rides of Silence. But at Wednesday’s ride, the single ghost bike was not alone.

The smaller white bicycle, donned with flowers and placed next to the vigil candle, was painted by Siemiarowski and friends just that morning. He had read the story in the Inquirer about six-year-old Riley Boyle of Bryn Mawr, who was killed Saturday, May 6, in an accident while riding his bike along Martin Luther King Drive. The motorist, unharmed, had hit the gate in the road, which swung around and killed Riley Boyle.

The smaller white bicycle is now tied to the gate that killed Riley Boyle two weeks ago. The author of the story that ran in the Inquirer, Felicity Paxton, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, collected money for Riley’s family at the event and was the one who tied the bike to the gate.

The city co-sponsorship if the event was in commemoration of longtime city employee and communications officer in the Commerce Department, Thomas McNally. McNally was killed in a bike accident near his home in Mayfair last September.

“We tend to underestimate the danger when we get into a car, and overestimate on a bike,” said cyclist Doty of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, who co-hosted the event with the city. Doty was rear-ended on Walnut Street before bike lanes were put in. Fortunately he was unhurt, but the driver did not stop until Doty started to yell out while still on the ground. He said the driver jumped out of the car, grabbed his license plate off the back and sped off.

Doty said Siemiarowski and co-organizer Scheinfeld are the reason why the ride was happening. “John epitomizes the future of a lifestyle that works for urban, oil-stressed transportation,” said Doty, who believes with the continual rise in gas prices more riders will be hitting the streets.

The Ride of Silence began at 7 p.m. The riders filed down the Ben Franklin Parkway, flanked by police cruisers that barricaded the seven-mile path that took riders around City Hall and back to the museum stairs. Ironically, as the police began barricading, drivers were trying to get around the cars, seemingly unaware of the event and indifferent to the 300 visible riders preparing for the commemorative ride.