Legends of the trail: The Cookie Lady

Since 1976, cyclists the world over have biked the TransAmerica trail, passing through 4,262 miles of forest and farmland, high desert and snowy mountains, between Oregon and Virginia. As they wind through Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, they pass by the home of June Curry — a legend on the trail.

For more than three decades, Curry has provided water, lodging and cookies to more than 14,000 cyclists. Her chocolate chip cookies earned her the nickname “The Cookie Lady.”

These days, 88-year-old Curry can no longer bake. Her fingers are gnarled with age. A stroke and two broken arms have limited movement in her hands.

But her hospitality continues. Since March, hundreds of cyclists have passed through her home, and she expects them to keep coming through October.

Curry lives alone in a red-brick house that creaks with age. She is barely 5 feet tall, with curly white hair and eyes as blue as the nearby mountains.

Two doors down, in the ground floor of her childhood home, she runs a makeshift hostel for the cyclists. There are four rooms for sleeping, a bathroom, a shower and a pantry stocked with food. She calls it the “bike house.”

“Every year when bike season comes around, I guess you say we have bike fever,” she says.

In the early years, she ran the bike house with her uncle and father, who have both died. They began by providing water for weary bikers in 1976, and it grew from there.

Now, Curry gets by with the help of Debbi Loving, a caretaker who comes by several times a week. In recent years, Curry’s hearing has become strained, and she has difficulties taking phone calls. Loving helps direct cyclists to the house, and keeps things up and running.

“She’s my right arm, I tell ya. My left one, too,” Curry says.

In the summer, the bike house, which is furnished with vintage couches and mismatched rugs, is warm and musty. It is clean, and smells faintly of sweat.

The walls are like a museum, covered from floor to ceiling with postcards, pictures and memorabilia left by the cyclists. Curry encourages each cyclist to keep in touch.

“I got cards to put up now, but I don’t know where to put them. Nothing’s left but the ceiling,” Curry says.

Each one tells a story of a person on a journey.

One of Curry’s favorite mementos is a metal bicycle pump that was signed by a group of boys who came through in 1981. Before the boys left, they cleaned the bike house thoroughly, mopping the floors and beating the dirt out of the rugs.

“As long as I’ve been doing this, I never had anyone here clean the house like the boys did that morning,” she said.

One wall is devoted to the history of Afton. Another is devoted to articles that warn of the dangers of alcohol. Curry tells all the cyclists, no drinking in the bike house.

“That’s my pet peeve. I don’t allow it. That’s what makes Cookie Lady mad,” she says.

Curry has kept track of each cyclist who stops by, snapping a picture with a Polaroid camera, and adding it to a binder. They’ve come from every state in the U.S. state and countries across the globe: Germany, Thailand, Japan, Israel.

The binders are filled with pages and pages of faces, frozen for a moment in time — sun-streaked and haggard from the road, smiling and stern. The youngest was 8 months old; the oldest was 79.

When Curry and her family established the bike house, they did not charge cyclists to stay there. These days, it’s still free, but Curry put out a cookie jar for donations to help keep the pantry stocked and the energy bills paid.

The bikers have been like a family to Curry.

When she had a stroke in February of 2005, she was living on a fixed income and needed in-home care during her recovery.

When word got out among the cyclists about her condition, donations and cards came pouring in by the hundreds, enough to pay for a caregiver for a year. She even got homemade cookies from a cyclist in Scotland.

“They’ve been wonderful. I think that’s what kept me going.”

Memories of the cyclists provide Curry comfort when she gets lonely. As she approaches ninety, it’s hard for her to crochet, write letters and do other things she once enjoyed.

“When I get depressed, I open up my letter book and read my letters. It always makes me feel better.”

Curry has kept in touch with countless cyclists.

There’s Joyce Cooke, a pre-K teacher from Waynesboro, who met Curry about 10 years ago through the local bike club. They hit it off, and began talking on the phone every week.

“When you meet her, she doesn’t have much family around anymore, but she treats everyone she meets like her family,” Cooke says.

“She opens her heart and her home, and tells wonderful stories.”

In recent years, Cooke says she noticed Curry was struggling to buy enough food and cleaning supplies for her bike house. So she brainstormed with her students on how they could help, and launched “Project Love for the Cookie Lady,” a school-wide fundraiser at Bethany Early Childhood Education Center.

Each spring, the students hold a food drive, and send the donations to Curry.

There’s Robin Frye, who met Curry in 1981 on his cross-country bike trip and calls her his “adoptive grandmother.”

When Frye was living in South Carolina, he visited Curry three to four times a year. Now he sees her more often since he lives six miles away.

“(She is) truly an American icon of ‘love thy neighbor,’” he said in an e-mail.

This year, there have been more cyclists then usual and donations have slowed down. But Curry plans on running the bike house as long as she can.

“As long as she’s still alive, it’ll be open,” Loving says.

Then Curry chimes in, “If the good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise.”