If you've ever visited our corn maze website, the first thing you see is an aerial photo of the maze. That photo is what hooks people on the idea of walking through a corn field because the picture is always so cool. Since our beginning in 2005, our photos have been taken by Randy Bales, a quiet, hard-working guy who loves to fly airplanes and ride motorcycles.
Yesterday morning, Randy was riding his motorcycle and was struck by a driver who ran a red light. Randy died of blunt force trauma. He is survived by his wife and 7year-old son. The other driver had several traffic violations already, was an unlicensed driver and is now free on bail even though he killed a good family man whose son only got 7 short years with his Daddy and whose wife is now faced with the seemingly impossible task of trying to live without her mate.
Randy came into our lives in a manner that so typical of small-town life. About 9 months before we opened the first corn maze, I was having my teeth cleaned at our local dentist's office in Moncks Corner. My dental hygienist Cindy mentioned in passing that her husband had a small plane and loved to take it up. I asked if he could take a photo for us on one of his flights, he agreed, and the rest is history. This is one of a million reasons why I love small-town life. And we loved Randy Bales for his warm and unassuming personality, his good work ethic, and his great multi-tasking abilities (he could fly the plane AND take photos at the same time). We loved Randy because he brought their son on a school field trip to the corn maze when there weren't a lot of other dads taking time off to do that. We loved Randy because he always came out to the corn maze with his family on a weekend afternoon when he probably had a million other things he'd rather be doing. Our hearts are heavy today.
To check out all of Randy's photos, cut and paste the following link: http://www.westfarmcornmaze.com/west_farm_corn_maze_015.htm.
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