Memorial

REMEMBERING GABE MEMORIAL

BY CHAD AUSTIN

By now Gabe Grunewald’s story is very well known so I don’t want to rewrite what has already appeared in print, online or on TV. Instead, I want to share my story about the first time I met her. I’ve only been around Gabe twice, but really, once was enough to realize that she was an incredibly special person who did everything “all-in” while still maintaining an amazing love of life.

In the fall of 2015 I messaged her to see if she had any interest in speaking to about 200 cross country runners ranging in age from 6 to 14 years old. I mentioned the time and date and she replied, “I think that sounds like fun and would work for me!” I’ve been fortunate enough to have other guest speakers at this meet over the years. Gabe’s speech wasn’t as polished as Heather Kampf’s, who does lots of speaking engagements, and she didn’t have “Olympian” in front of her name like Carrie Tollefson. However, right away it was very apparent that the kids were drawn to her enthusiasm for running, her message, and most of all, her spirit.

After speaking for 15 minutes, Gabe opened it up for questions and a line quickly began to form. As you can imagine from an audience of this age, the questions came fast and furious, and the topics were all over the board. Many of the same questions were asked two or three times, just in slightly different ways, but that didn’t bother Gabe. She just smiled and rephrased her previous answer. After 15 more minutes of this I felt guilty about having to stop the Q&A. But the sun was starting to set and I wanted to give the kids (and parents) a chance to get their photo taken before the night was over. Again, Gabe was incredibly gracious and continued to flash her beautiful smile time and time again. After Gabe died, my friend BJ posted a picture of his daughter Hadley with her hero from this very night. The caption said, “You’ll never know the impact you had and all the lives you touched. This one especially.”

At the time Gabe was only 28 and had already defeated cancer twice. She would go on to defeat it a third time before finally succumbing on June 11, 2019, at age 32. As I saw on Twitter, “Cancer didn’t defeat Gabe. Cancer had to come back four times. That’s not winning.” No, it’s not winning – especially when you consider how Gabe handled herself in the 10 years since cancer first appeared at the end of her senior year of college. Not only was she more positive than nearly everyone I know, she continued to train and race at an elite level – scheduling her workouts and races around her treatment. When she wasn’t doing that she was busy building up her bravelikegabe.org foundation. What started as a simple hashtag to support Gabe has evolved into a foundation that has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research. And it’s not done yet. This foundation, and her legacy, will live on forever.

When it comes to sorting through this difficult time, I think Kampf said it best, “Why does this feel like such a shock…when we’ve known for so long that this is the natural course for a rare, incurable cancer? It’s because we’re not thinking about the cancer. We’re thinking about Gabe. Vital. Vibrant. The contagiously hopeful fighter.”

Gabe Grunewald spoke to a group of 200 cross country runners ages 6 to 14 for the author and posed for this photo afterward.