BMX bikers and skateboarders in Elk County are re-doubling their efforts to re-build a skate park in Ridgway.

We have more on how some people are hoping it will be a reminder of an avid skater.

“Heartbreaking. It was awful. The worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life,” says crash victim’s friend Michelle Doverspike.

Doverspike wishes she could apologize to Austin Miller for past fights, wishes he could spend time with six-month-old Sawyer.

“Things that were left unsaid. Things that were said and you just don’t get the chance to go back,” says Doverspike.

Miller, 22, and his friend Dallan Pangallo, 21, both died in a car crash three months ago.

“It’s just really crazy to see how fast things can be taken away from you in life,” says car crash victims’ friend Michael McClain. “You don’t really have a reality check or any sort of bearing that life can go in an instant until something like this happens to you, until you lose your best friends.”

McClain is a BMX rider.

“I started riding with Austin and he just taught me everything I know,” says McClain.

But, the wooden skate park Miller used is now gone.

Organizer Gary Gerber says the borough suddenly tore it down last year, instead of storing it, after the YMCA cut the skate park’s lease in favor of putting in more parking.

Now, Gerber says the council’s donated half of the parking lot by the nearby pool, where volunteers hope to add a new skate park with a memory wall.

“It’ll be like a picture of Austin and it’ll have some some things that he always said and that we’ll know that it’s dedicated in his memory,” says Gerber, the Ridgway Recreation Association president.

Gerber, whose 30-year-old son is now a pro-BMX biker, says he and friends picked up these two old ramps from Galloway, N.J., after paying $2,600 in an online auction.

But, they still need to re-pave the parking lot, and get a third section, all of which could cost about $30,000, Gerber said.

“Once we get the money for the blacktop, we’ll lay the park down and then we’ll build it back up,” says McClain.  

“He wanted the skate park. He wanted it back. He would have done anything to get it, and if he was here today, seeing our community do this, he would be in tears,” says Doverspike.

Gerber says they hope to have the park opened by next year, and that the YMCA has donated $1,000 towards the new park, but more is needed.

He says a fundraising site has been set up by his son online for the skate park.