Maynard R. Sembower watched the construction of the Western Maryland Railway, rode it as a child and an adult, saw it through its final days of passenger and freight traffic and was delighted to see its right-of-way reborn as a rail-trail.

Maynard R. Sembower -- Devoted last 17 years of his life to trail

He was proud that the first segment of the new bike trail in Somerset County started in his beloved Rockwood in 1993 and extended about seven miles down to Markleton. And what is now the Great Allegheny Passage was only five houses away from his home.

"That gave him the opportunity to talk to the workmen and monitor the progress of the trail," said Hank Parke, acting president of the Somerset County Rails to Trails Association. "When local residents and visitors had questions about it, Maynard had the answers."

Maynard, a retired law-enforcement officer for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, died Sept. 16 of congestive heart failure at the Hospice House in Somerset. He was 100. He will be buried today in the Rockwood IOOF Cemetery.

After his wife, Edna, died in 1992, Maynard, a tall, friendly man with a warm smile and a firm handshake, directed his attention to the new trail.

He asked Parke for printed information about it and gave it to visitors.

He referred them to local businesses when they asked about lodging and restaurants.

When bicyclists asked about T-shirts, Parke got them and Maynard sold them -- first from the trunk of his car, then from a card table and finally from a small wooden building that he and his son-in-law, Roger Romesburg, designed.

"He sold thousands and thousands of dollars of T-shirts, sweatshirts, ballcaps, pins, you name it," Parke said. "The proceeds all went to our trail association. He was a terrific ambassador for Rockwood and the Great Allegheny Passage. Bicyclists came to Rockwood just to see him and shake his hand."

Linda McKenna Boxx, president of the Allegheny Trail Alliance, which is the coalition of seven rail-trail groups building and maintaining the passage, met Maynard in 1997. Gov. Tom Ridge had come to Rockwood to announce grants that extended the trail from Fort Hill to Confluence.

"I saw all these people flocking to him," Boxx said. "It was immediately apparent that he loved Rockwood, loved the trail and, as he told me with a twinkle in his eye, he 'loved to watch the pretty girls go by.' "

Maynard's impact on the trail was such that the Rockwood trailhead was formally dedicated as the Maynard R. Sembower Visitors Center. It includes a large parking lot, gazebo, portable toilet, water fountain and picnic table. The Rockwood Trailhouse bed and breakfast and Rockwood Bike Shop border it.

And he is prominently portrayed in a mural on the side of Clapper's Building Materials in Rockwood. He is wearing bib overalls and a locomotive engineer's cap.

"Maynard was my public-relations man from the moment I opened each of my businesses," said Judy Pletcher, who owns and operates the Rockwood Mill Shoppes & Opera House, the Mill Shoppe Antiques and the Hostel on Main.

"He was a wonderful person."

Maynard's daughter and only child, Carol Sembower Romesburg, remembers her father as "Pap," a man devoted to his family, his town and the trail. "The trail was his life for the last 17 years of his life."

Memorial contributions may be sent to the Somerset County Rails to Trails Association, PO Box 413, Somerset, Pa., 15501.