Fellow cycling enthusiasts hit the road to honor Larry Kemp

By Charles E. Brown
Seattle Times staff reporter

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Bicycling enthusiast Larry Kemp died last week after being struck by a car while cycling in Spain.
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Larry Kemp was almost always there, in his orange-and-blue racing jersey. He'd join fellow members of the Byrne Specialty Gases Racing Team for coffee and then they'd take off.

Those teammates met as usual yesterday. But they were joined by droves of others for a group ride around the south end of Lake Washington in a tearful memorial to Mr. Kemp, 51, who died Tuesday (March 16) in Mallorca, Spain.

Mr. Kemp was struck by a car while vacationing with friends, including a Byrne teammate and others from the Seattle area. Mr. Kemp, in Mallorca for a bicycle-training camp in the Balearic Islands, was at the end of a small group riding single-file when a car sped around a blind corner on a narrow road and struck him from behind, said Dan Byrne, the local teammate who was there.

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Larry Kemp's mother, Connie Hwang, photographed the memorial that drew more than 300 avid bicyclists from the Seattle area.

"He was the most dedicated and loyal man I know," Byrne said of Mr. Kemp yesterday just before the group departed for the weekly ride. "His loss leaves a big hole and void in my life and our team."

More than 300 riders, including teammates and racers from other area bicycle clubs, donned black armbands as they joined the ride yesterday.

"We were his family and his friends," said Brian Griffith, former president of the riding group. He said Mr. Kemp, a Byrne team board member, was a "bicycle enthusiast who was either working or riding his bike or going on trips to ride his bike."

Mr. Kemp, whose formal name was Laurence Hwang Kemp, lived in the Seattle area nearly half his life. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, he attended the University of Oregon, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in four years.

	GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES More than 300 members of various bike clubs from the Seattle area, including Karen Wolfe, left, Beth Lyndon-Griffith, center, and her husband, Brian Griffith, mourn fellow rider Larry Kemp at Leschi Park yesterday.

During his career, he worked for several companies, most recently as a Hewlett-Packard manager at Microsoft in Redmond.

Bicycling was one reason he loved the Northwest, said his mother, Connie Hwang of Berkeley, Calif. She said he frequently rode his bike between his Montlake-area home and his Redmond job.

Mr. Kemp had become serious about the sport a couple of decades ago. Before that, rock climbing was his passion, she said.

In recent weeks, he bought a titanium racing bicycle, one that can be taken apart and packed in a suitcase for traveling, said Griffith.

Another team member, Lisa Given of Mercer Island, described Mr. Kemp as an aggressive rider. "He always liked to lead the charge," she said. "He liked to be in the very front. He was the one pushing the pace.

"That's why it's so hard for us to believe he was at the end of the line," she said of the accident.

Charles E. Brown: 206-464-2206 or cbrown@seattletimes.com

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