FORKS — The outdoors defined Stephen Gordon Gracey.
The wooded areas and rivers of the North Olympic Peninsula and Alaska were his life.
As a West End fishing and hunting guide for more than 20 years, it’s where he made his living and many of his greatest memories.
That all changed three years ago after a horrific accident left his left arm permanently paralyzed, right eye blind and brain severely damaged.
At that point, the man known by many in Forks as “Gordy” simply had to survive, and, once he did that, recover.
Now, after enduring countless surgeries, hours of physical therapy and relentless pain, Gordy is back in tune with the outdoors at his Yella Dawg Fly Shop in downtown Forks.
It might not be the same as tracking a grizzly bear through Alaska wilderness, or hooking into a 25-pound steelhead on the Sol Duc River, but it’s a connection all the same.
Gordon Gracey can’t catch as many fish as he once did, but he can do everything in his power to make sure others do.
“This is not something I do for money,” Gordy said while lunging on a cane with his right hand and looking over his shop.
“This is something I do basically to keep myself functioning. This is kind of an adaptation from being tragically unable to guide to doing something that still keeps my nose with the fishy smell.”
Avid outdoorsman
Few know that odor better than Gracey.
The 50-year-old New Jersey native spent nearly his entire adult life taking people fishing.
For 24 years, he hopped between Forks and Alaska helping friends and clients — sometimes both — hook fish and take down game while his wife, Kim, worked as a nurse at Forks Community Hospital.
Gordy did it as good as anyone on the West End, according to Bob Gooding of Olympic Sporting Goods.
“I don’t think you could run into a guide out here that didn’t have the highest respect for him,” said Gooding, who shares half of his shop at 190 S Forks Ave. with Gordy.
Name the target, and Gordy probably knew where to find it and how to get it; be it salmon, steelhead and trout or grizzly bear, black bear, caribou, elk, deer or wild turkey.
He had a long list of clients that included the occasional celebrity, like former Seattle Mariner Jay Buhner, musician Huey Lewis and President Jimmy Carter.
Much of that was taken away in June of 2007 when Gordy fell face first from a cliff 32 feet high onto a flat slab of rock while hiking with a friend near Dickey Falls.
He sustained several severe injuries in the fall: ruptured spleen, fractured skull, shattered right arm, damaged right eye and brain damage.
Tim Adams, U.S. Coast Guard aviation survival technician first class, helped airlift him out of the remote area.
“I’ve come across guys with head trauma that was pretty severe,” the Coast Guard serviceman of two decades said in 2008, “but he was probably one of the worst I’ve seen. His face was severely swollen.”
After three weeks in what doctors termed an “extended sleep period” at Harborview Medical Center, Gordy slowly began the long road back to recovery with Kim by his side.
She camped out in the hospital waiting room for five weeks when he was in intensive care. When he returned for rehabilitation months later, she slept in a cot next to his bed.
As the months passed, Gordy’s physical shape and mental acuity improved incrementally.
Enough so, that by the winter of 2008 it was time for him to go back to work.
Back to work
Marcia Farrell’s philosophy is everyone can work.
A vocational rehabilitation counselor for the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), it’s her job to assist those with disabilities that are a barrier to employment.
Soon after starting up Yella Dawg, Gordy and Kim decided to approach the DVR for help in getting the business off the ground.
Since the agency doesn’t usually give assistance for self employment, they were a special case.
After meeting with Farrell and a third-party business consultant, the Graceys were able to show it was a viable enterprise.
That allowed the DVR to help fund product inventory and provide training so that Gordy could begin operating the business with some autonomy.
“Gordy, I believe, was one of the more challenging [cases] because of the severity of the injury,” Farrell said.
“He still has very limited use of his hands [his left arm remains paralyzed]. He still is cognitively impacted quite seriously, and that is a source of frustration for him.
“It really presented some challenges and struggles, but he is a remarkable man. He didn’t lose sight of his dream and what he wanted to do. He just kept at it.”
Farrell was finally able to “clear” Gordy from the program in June, after nearly 1 ½ years of working together.
There was no more need to keep tabs on Yella Dawg.
“It just has worked wonderfully well for Gordy,” Farrell said. “I have just seen a huge change in him.
“I think once he was able to get back in the world of work doing what he knew and what he loves. . . he just blossomed. It’s just been a wonderful story.
“I was a little doubtful as to whether or not he would have the capabilities of doing that, but again, [that’s because of the injures].
“Through Kim, his wife, he does have remarkable support.
“Kim goes above and beyond.”
True partner
Indeed, Kim has been there every step of the way.
Even now, she does water therapy sessions with him almost every night. That has helped improve his mobility to the point that he often gets around with the help of a cane.
She’s also been involved in the business, helping order inventory, take care of receipts and remodel the shop.
Bob Gooding, who takes care of sales whenever Gordy isn’t in the shop, also provides support.
“It’s great,” said Kim, who still works the night shift at the hospital, “because it’s like, ‘OK, it’s time for us to go to work.’
“He just gets so excited that he’s somehow involved with seeing people fish and having a good time. It’s something to look forward to, something to do.”
Gordy still ties flies and provides many of the patterns that his supplier, Solitude Fly Company, delivers to the shop. He also gets out to fish and hunt on occasion.
He fashioned two different rod holders that allow him to fish as well as a gun rest for hunting.
Just this month, he went out into the field to hunt black bear, then flew up to Alaska days later to fish for salmon and halibut.
There is still work to be done at Yella Dawg (named after Gordy’s favorite Labrador retriever, Nate).
Kim and Gordy would like to spruce up the shop a little more and replace some inventory, but with the shop just breaking even right now, all of that has to come slowly.
As it is right now, customers have a wide array of flies to choose from at the shop.
There’s also rods, reels, fly tying materials, bird dog gear and quirky pieces of outdoor art all around the store.
It all fits into a vision of what Gordy wants Yella Dawg to be.
“This is a little hole in the wall fly shop, for guys who come out here . . . that need not just the basics but need specific equipment for success in this area,” he said.
“It’s for people who practice fly fishing, who are not just book learners, but people who know how to tie their own blood knot.
“The money is absolutely not the important part of this at all. It’s the ability to assist and be helpful to people who come here to fly fish where there was never a fly shop.”
