Ernie Beilke’s bike was permanently parked on 9/27/2022. He was challenged in his later years by Parkinson’s disease and died following a fall. He donated his remains to the Mayo Clinic to further education and research. He was born “green” (long before the 1960’s environmental movement) on June 28, 1933 on a farm in Mower County near Racine to Hilda and Elmer Beilke. In his family, perhaps spurred by the Great Depression, there was nothing that could not be considered recyclable, reusable, repurposable or, preferably, reduced altogether. He graduated from Rochester High in 1951 after Lutheran elementary schools in Lewiston and Rochester, where the family had moved in 1943. He played basketball and ran track and worked high atop the Kahler. He made friends with a waitress there from Lourdes. A fter a year’s long courtship, including treks to La Crosse where that waitress was becoming a nurse, and Ernie’s two year stint in Uncle Sam’s army, he and Mary Haggerty married a