Students take up fundraiser when cyclist struck by car

Students of a school a man was raising funds for are taking up his fundraiser after he was thrown some 80 feet from the highway when struck by a vehicle east of Hingham on U.S. Highway 2 Saturday.

“Thats what bothers him more than anything, he wasn’t able to complete the fundraiser,” cyclist Will Wolf’s wife, Laura Murphy-Wolf said Wednesday in a telephone interview from The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Wolf had raised $25,000 of his $100,000 goal for The Creative Arts Academy in Davenport, Iowa, and traveled 925 miles of his 3,500 mile journey when he was struck Saturday, Murphy-Wolf said.

Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Matt Erickson said the driver was driving at the 70 mph speed limit and did not see Wolf until it was too late and was unable to avoid hitting him.

The case has been referred to the Hill County Attorney’s Office to decide if charges should be filed. Hill County Attorney Karen Alley said Wednesday she could not comment on the case.

People were performing CPR on Wolf until an ambulance arrived, and Hill County Sheriff’s Office responded as well as the Highway Patrol.

Wolf was taken to Northern Montana Hospital and then flown to Benefis Health Care in Great Falls.

Murphy-Wolf said her husband’s left arm was severely damaged and he received multiple other injuries including a fractured scapula, two fractured vertebrae and several fractured ribs.

She said she was in Davenport attending an event at the school when she was called about the crash. She scrambled to get a flight connection to Great Falls, and then began searching for the best elbow specialist in the country, which she found was in Rochester’s Mayo Clinic. She then had Wolf transferred there, and the doctors at the Mayo are evaluating what steps to take next.

“We’re hanging in there, taking it day by day, moment by moment,” she said.

She had nothing but praise for the people who stopped to help Wolf, for the law enforcement and emergency medical technicians and the staff at Northern Montana Hospital and Benefis Hospital.

She said the staff at Benefis, once they knew the story, gave Wolf a new name.

“They were saying, ‘Hey, I met the Miracle Man,’” she said.

She said she and her husband work in private equity, where they are hired by companies that buy troubled companies or businesses and bring in people to revive them.

“He was in between gigs,” she said, “… he had wanted for 30 years to cycle across the country.”

The residence he owns in Davenport is next to the founders of the Creative Arts Academy, Murphy-Wolf said, and he decided to cycle for a cause — raising funds for the academy.

The academy does great work for its students, she said.

“They create such incredible energy with these young people,” Murphy-Wolf said.

She said teachers had been reading Wolf’s blog to the students each morning and followed his progress online, acting like his ground crew.

But the school decided not to tell the students about his final blog entry — about the crash — Saturday before their performance at the school.

They held a talent show Saturday as a fundraiser to help Wolf make his goal, and surpassed their own goal of $2,000, raising $2,250.

When the students found out Monday, she said, they were very disturbed, and said they want to do something. So they decided to finish the length of his journey.

The students will be walking, biking and riding horses, tracking the mileage they do, to complete his 2,650 miles, she said.

One of the groups at the school is calling itself The Eighth Grade Wolf Pack, she added.

She said the crash also stresses the importance of people driving in Montana being aware of bicyclists on the highway.

“We ask that all drivers obey the law and provide sufficient passing space as per the law when passing a cyclist,” she said.

——

GoFundMe account for Will Wolf’s Creative Arts Academy fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/caa4caa/.

Cycling Across America 4 Creative Arts Academy website: https://www.caa4caa.com/.