‘He was kind and generous, and he loved doing Bloomsday’: Spokane Valley woman honors father who died running race in 2018

Mindy Rowe sat on the corner of Broadway Avenue and Adams Street Sunday morning, cheering on her husband Rob, their friends and community members as they raced to the Bloomsday finish line.

“It’s an awesome thing,” Rowe said with a smile, as she watched the crowd pass. “Even though the weather’s kind of sucky.”

A foot surgery prevented Rowe from running this year, but she still wanted to be there, in the rain, on a chilly May morning. Sunday was as much a celebration as it was a remembrance for the lifelong Spokane Valley resident.

In 2018, her father, Brook Kamp, died from a heart attack at the exact spot where Rowe sat. He had just reached the seventh -mile marker in what would be his 36th and final Bloomsday. He was 72 .

“He was awesome,” Rowe said. “He loved everybody and he was kind and generous. And he loved doing Bloomsday. He wouldn’t train all year, but he would come out and just do Bloomsday.”

Rowe’s family placed a small memorial with a sign depicting Kamp’s likeness, flowers and balloons on a parking meter near where he died . She usually participates in the race, while her husband mans the post. The two switched places this year due to her surgery.

It was a family tradition to run Bloomsday and welcome spring together, which made her father proud, Rowe said.

“It’s been a family thing; we do it every year,” Rowe said. “And at least he went doing something he absolutely loved.”

Rowe said she used to feel a lot of guilt about the day her father died, but Bloomsday, and the character of the people it attracts, has helped her find some peace.

She would typically race alongside her father, but she had raced up ahead that day and was not around when he passed. She found out hours after the fact, after she wasn’t able to get in touch with him when she finished her race.

But Kamp was not alone when he died, Rowe said.

She’s learned from strangers, friends and Bloomies over the years how a doctor and a pair of nurses participating in the race rushed to his side as soon as he went down. Other racers formed a circle to give the group privacy as they worked on Kamp.

“They were on him in seconds,” Rowe said. “But he was gone before he probably hit the ground. They tried to revive him for 45 minutes.”

Rowe said the community support her father received that day and the support her family has received since the tragedy have reminded her of why she loves her hometown.

Bloomsday pulls all of the greater Spokane community’s best qualities into focus, she said, as various friends and associates running by acknowledged her memorial, stopping for a hug or just to say hello.

“I heard stories up to a year later about people that were there when he went down,” Rowe said. “It’s just awesome, the community that surrounds people when they need it. The support is really, really cool, and it just makes you feel good. There’s still kindness out there.”

One of those stories found its way to Rowe on the one -year anniversary of Kamp’s death, after Rowe and more than 30 family members and friends ran Bloomsday wearing blue T-shirts with his likeness. She said a woman flagged them down at the end and identified herself as one of the nurses who held her father’s hand as the impromptu medical team went to work.

“She just said, ‘I’ve been trying to look for you for a year and let you know that your dad wasn’t alone,’ ” Rowe said. “And she sat and held his hand while they were working on him.”

“That was amazing,” she added. “We’re still friends. After we met that first year, we still keep in contact .”

Rowe said she and her family plan to keep the memorial going for every Bloomsday. It helps keep his memory alive, allows them to connect with the community that’s supported them and it’s another element to fold into their annual race tradition.

“For us, it was a family thing,” Rowe said. “But it’s also just community, because everybody from all walks of life can come out and just be together and nobody’s judgmental. Everybody just has a good time and we look forward to it every year. It’s just cool to have so many people out and about together.”