Columnist Susan Snyder: Homer was a model of service

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 4:25 a.m.

An accomplished carpenter, skier, hiker, bicyclist and jogger, he romped through his 82 years with a vigor envied by people half his age.

A lot of people knew and loved Homer, who died at Mountainview Hospital Dec. 8 after a weeklong battle with pneumonia.

Even people who didn't know him have been touched by his work all over the valley from casinos on the Strip to trails at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

As a contractor and carpenter, Homer remodeled the arcade areas of Circus Circus and Excalibur, friends say. As a volunteer, he applied his finely tuned skills to rebuilding the original guest reception desk at the Red Rock visitors' center.

He made the plaster relief maps of Red Rock that sit in a Plexiglas case near the exhibit area's rear doors. He built bookshelves and space-saving, folding desks in the center's office areas.

Outside the center is an open-air structure with picnic tables, bathrooms and a Gatorade machine. Look closely at the plaque mounted on one wall, and you'll see it is the "Homer Morgan Bicycle Pavilion."

"He literally took on that project by himself," said Ed Thiessen, a longtime Las Vegas cyclist and advocate.

Homer was an original member of Friends of Red Rock Canyon and the Las Vegas Valley Bicycle Club. The two groups fronted the project's money, and Homer built it. Volunteers helped on weekends. But Homer was there alone on weekdays, scaling the scaffold and pushing 73.

"In bike club meetings, we'd say some trail needed cleanup. Homer would be there but he didn't say a word," Thiessen recalled. "Two days later, you'd go out there, and there was Homer doing it."

He touched those less physically able than he with a wheelchair ramp he built at Death Valley's Salt Creek area with Patrick Steele, a friend so close that Homer referred to him as a nephew.

Steele suspects Homer contracted an upper-respiratory malady after working on the engine of an RV he was loaning to a friend. It was a drizzly, cold November night and Homer refused to come in until about 2 a.m., Steele said.

"He was such a wonderful man. He seemed ageless to me," said Chris Miller, a recreation planner with the Bureau of Land Management in Carson City who met Homer when she was Red Rock's interpretive specialist.

She recalled a man who regularly hiked to Turtlehead Peak -- the hard way, from Sandstone Quarry -- to change the guest register at the top. Miller accompanied him one time a year after he broke his hip on a bike tour of Australia. He was almost 70 and still recovering.

"My knees were giving out on the way down, and he gave his cane to me. He said, 'Here. You need this more than I do,' " Miller said.

Steele says Homer didn't want any kind of remembrance, but that didn't sit right with him or anyone else who knew Homer.

Las Vegas Valley Bicycle Club members will do a memorial ride at 9:30 a.m. Saturday from Smith's parking lot at Hualapai Way and Charleston Boulevard to Red Rock's bicycle pavilion. Even in his 80s, Homer pedaled to Red Rock.

"He had a heart of gold. He is going to be missed by so many people," Miller said.

Ride boldly, Homer.