Susan Billingsley - Grand Canyon River Guides

FarewellsHenry Quayle, 1946–2007Except during 1968, when he was in Vietnam,Henry worked for Western (Jack Currey) from1965 to 1972. He was a better boatman than Iand did sublime warehouse rubber work during thewinter months. He and Jake Luck learned violintogether in the Western warehouse and both weregood at those old Hank Williams songs. Henry and hiswife, Lois, took a J-rig to New York City in a U-haultruck one fall, and ran a promo trip on the HudsonRiver in New York City. Like Betty Ann said, Henrywas a gentle man and never met a stranger. An iconoclastas well, he drove a 1958 Ford pickup for 25 yearsafter going back to Idaho.Amil QuayleSteve CurreyIrecently ran into a young man who had been aformer neighbor of mine when he was a kid. He hadjust returned from a Mormon mission in Chile, andwe had a great conversation about the beauty of thecountry and the people. It brought back great memoriesof running the Bio Bio with Steve Currey Expeditionsback in 1991. It hit me driving home that I hadn’ttalked to Steve in about a year, and that I needed totouch base with him. I pulled up his website to get hiscontact information, only to find the following: Ourhearts and prayers go out to the Currey family on thepassing of Steve Currey. He lived life as we all should andwill be deeply missed. We miss you Steve…. As Icontinued to read, I was more surprised to find out thatthis happened last summer. Stunned, I picked up thephone and called Butch to see if he had heard anynews.Byron “Butch” Schimmp and I were working ariver trip for Adventures West the summer of 1990,when we became associated with Steve. He hadbooked some people on the trip, and decided to comealong with them. The name “Currey” didn’t meananything to me, working my second year on the river,but Butch knew the history of Western River Expeditions,the J-Rig, and the connection with Jack Currey;so Steve’s presence was more meaningful to him. Tomake a long story short, this turned out to be thebeginning of a friendship between Steve, Butch, and I,which led to our river trip in Chile. The next yearfound us in the Marshall Islands together on a seakayaking adventure. Here we were, just north of theequator, sitting on an island about 400 yards long by100 yards wide, our feet in the Pacific, listening tosome great stories about Steve’s youth.I laughed as Steve related his first time to theMarshalls (about age twelve, as I recall) with his dadJack. They came to scout it out as a potential commercialprospect, and Jack was so impressed and sure of theplace, he ordered Steve to stay there while he wentback to the states and got some paying customers. Steveentertained himself catching fish, shooting coconuts outof trees with a .22 rifle, and swimming, while he waitedfor Jack to return. A month later, here came Jack withsome airline employees willing to pay for the experienceof diving and snorkeling in Micronesia. I listened toSteve share stories of rowing baggage on the Mainpage 4grand canyon river guides