Beloved coach dies on mountain hike - WALB-TV
Rescue crews are working to recover the body of a retired Special Forces from a Colorado mountainside where he died in a hiking accident.
61-year-old Lt. Col. Wayne Kirkbride used to live in Sylvester. He founded Worth County High School's ROTC program.
He and his wife, Melanie Golden Kirkbride, were staying at the Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort over the weekend.
Kirkbride, a skilled mountain climber, set out to climb a mountain Sunday and never returned. His body was found near Cascade Falls Wednesday.
Kirkbride was a retired U.S. Special Forces officer who is described as a goal oriented and motivational man who touched the lives of many in Sylvester.
Lt. Col. Wayne Kirkbride spent a lot of his retirement hiking.
"Just recently he had been hiking at other places and had pictures of him and his daughter hiking," said Betty Ann Dowdy, who knew Kirkbride for almost 15 years.
She described him as, "Very friendly, very easy to get to know, loved the Lord and it showed ion everything he did and said."
For several years he directed Sunday school at First Baptist Church in Sylvester.
"He was a very good director, and our Sunday school grew immensely in the time he was here," said Dowdy.
He also started the Junior ROTC program at Worth County High School, along with teaching Science and coaching wrestling.
"The thing I remember most about him, he was 5 foot tall, and every where we went, everybody thought I was the head coach, but he was the head coach, and I was the assistant," said Worth Co. Middle School Teacher/Coach Jimmy Hughes.
And the news of his death came as a shock to people who knew him. "I thought all alone that he is such a survivor, he is such a good hiker and he is so well trained that if he was injured that he could take care of himself," said Hughes.
"It was shocking to me because I knew he was a very fit person and he knew his way around anything, it was just a compute shock when I read the news and saw that he had posted," said Heather Faircloth, Worth Co. Schools P. R. Director
The Chaffee County, Colorado Sheriff's Office said it appeared that he fell off the crest of a steep slope.
"He was so adventurous and he would do all kinds of stuff like that, it just surprises me that he would have a slip like that and fall and that was it for him," says Worth Co. Middle School Teacher/Coach Jimmy Hughes.
Kirkbride wrote a book called When God Says Yes that is available free at the First Baptist Church in Sylvester.
Chaffee County Sheriff's Office says recovering the body will be difficult because of the steep, rocky terrain.
Copyright 2011 WALB. All rights reserved.
29 Sep, 2011--
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