http://www.thenewstribune.com/front/topphoto/story/4965733p-4539341c.html
Tacoma, WA - June 23, 2005
A life too short, but lived in full
The world knew him only as ‘The Little Tacoma Boy.’
PAUL SAND; The News Tribune
Published: June 22nd, 2005 05:46 AM
Ryan Hade was on a bike ride in the Fern Hill neighborhood near his home on May 20, 1989, when Earl Shriner abducted him, raped him, stabbed him, cut off his penis and left him for dead.
The horror of the attack spurred nationwide media coverage, an outpouring of community support for Hade and greater focus on sex offenders. Through it all, his family kept his name from being publicly revealed.
In the years since the attack, Hade lived every day like there wouldn’t be another, his family and friends said this week.
“He survived something that was extreme and consequently he lived his life extreme,” said his mother, Helen Harlow, who became a children’s rights crusader after helping start the Tennis Shoe Brigade. “You cheat death once, you figure you can cheat it just about any time you want.”
Chris Kunkel met Hade two years ago and considered him his best friend.
“He always talked how life was short, you’ve got to make every day count,” Kunkel said. “That’s really what he did, make every day count.”
Hade didn’t discuss the details of the attack much because he couldn’t remember them and because the family did not talk about it, said his grandmother, Betty Foote of University Place.
“It’s like he just put it out of his mind. He just felt comfortable with that fellow put away,” Foote said of Shriner, 55, who is serving a 131-year sentence for the attack.
Hade, in counseling until he was 13, didn’t know the exact date of the attack, but he knew the season, Harlow said. Until two or three years ago, he became “irritable and edgy” and physically ill each year near the anniversary, she said.
But most days Hade was one of the guys.
He liked to skateboard, snowboard and sky dive. He had wanted to get a pilot’s license, and got a flying lesson from a cousin on a recent visit to Illinois. He recently bought a 1979 Trans-Am, which he called a “chick magnet,” and was going to fix up, his mother said. He also talked about going back to school to study business.
In the past, school had been a struggle when Hade was a child.
Hindered by dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, Hade made his way through Fern Hill Elementary School.
He wasn’t singled out by classmates because of the attack, Foote said, but that quickly changed when he started Baker Middle School. Students began to ask him whether he was the boy who’d had his penis cut off, she said.
Hade left Baker for New Horizon School in Renton where he could get more attention for his learning disabilities.
He completed the ninth grade while living with his father, Lowell Hade, in Roseburg, Ore., and moved back to Tacoma after the school year.
He eventually entered Bates Technical College to learn upholstery work and graduated in 2001.
Hade left home when he was 18 and became interested in real estate investing, both to make money and because he didn’t like being a tenant, Harlow said. He bought, fixed up and sold a home in Tacoma and one in Spanaway.
Foote said he did it without help from a trust fund, which at one point reached nearly $1 million. Hade supported himself with a monthly stipend from the fund, and by doing upholstery jobs and fixing and selling houses, Harlow said.
He was living in a mobile home on seven acres in Roy, but was looking for a duplex in Tacoma for himself and his grandmother, Foote said. He wanted her to live in a single-story home because her knees can’t handle climbing the stairs in her current home, she said.
Kunkel, who met Hade through a mutual friend at Bates, said Hade taught him how to snowboard. He also loaned Kunkel money and let him live virtually rent-free in an extra trailer on the Roy property until he found work.
“He did more for me than anyone in my life,” Kunkel said. “He just encouraged me every day to stay off drugs and go to work.”
As a teenager, Hade had developed his musical skills, despite having no training and not knowing how to read music, Harlow said.
He wrote, recorded the music and was the DJ in the hip-hop group LikeMinds. He used drum machines and keyboards to create the music, and spent hours scouring record shops for old recordings to sample, Harlow said.
Kunkel said Hade had ridden his motorcycle only a few times before the fatal crash on June 9. He wasn’t familiar with the road, and he didn’t have much experience riding at night, Kunkel said.
About 9:40 p.m. and about five miles from home, Hade and a pickup truck collided at 123rd Avenue Southeast and Morris Road Southeast, the Washington State Patrol said.
The fatal wreck made the newspapers, but only as short accounts. Hade’s name went unrecognized by most.
With Harlow’s blessing, Kunkel retrieved Hade’s yellow Suzuki motorcycle from an impound lot in Yelm on Monday. He plans to rebuild it to honor his friend.
“He was willing to help anyone if he felt they honestly were trying,” Kunkel said. “He worked every day to make sure his life had meaning.” Ryan Hade’s family are making plans for a public memorial service for him.
Paul Sand: 253-597-8660
[email protected]