Friday, October 17, 2025
My Deepest condolences to the entire Riker family. I was shocked to hear of Wayne’s passing.
What can say about Wayne he was a character, leader, but most of all a friend.
When I was switching careers, from a truck truck driver to the computer field, if I had a a topic I didn’t understand Wayne would would take the time to answer or explain the topic.
Wayne assisted me when I tried to build my first PC and I couldn’t get something to work properly. I’m going back to when we thought AOL was great “You Got Mail” and a 56k modem was lighting fast.
But what remember Wayne doing was after he attended a father daughter club at the YMCA and paying a fee to participate.
Wayne said I can do this for free and asked his wife Christine to ask the other Moms to spread the word if the Dads would like to do something once a month. There were about 6 or 7 Dads and Daughter regularly each month. We rotated homes, where each month there was a craft that the daughters would make with the Dads help, if they allowed us. When the craft was done or we the kids became board there was snacks for us to munch on.
Then there were the spring rafting/camping trips and the winter tubing/sledding trips.
I remember on one of the winter trips after a great day packed with so much fun. At night we would start a fire in the fireplace to dry our boots and gloves for the next day.
This is what I meant by what a character Wayne was, I decided to take a shower while everyone was down stairs enjoying the fire.
From what I was told, Wayne asked where I was and someone said Henry’s taking a shower. Wayne decided to pick the lock and quietly took all my clothes and towels. The only thing left was the small garbage can.
I’m now standing in the bathroom with no clothes, so I open the bathroom door to peak out and i start hearing giggling. I shut the door and the giggles turned to laughter. Wayne had all the girls sitting on the floor along the wall so there was no way for me to get to my room, This went on for about 20 minutes until the BIG KIDS returned my clothes so I could get dressed.
We had some great times my friend.
Rest peacefully and no hitting on the Angels.
Henry Marazia
