By Pauline Masson –
June 8 is National Best Friends Day and our town is ahead of the game as two groups of best friends – friends of the late Danny “Turtle” Johnson and friends of the late Jeffrey White – mesh their love of fun and togetherness in an anything-on-wheels poker run to benefit the community.
On June 1, the sixth annual Turtle Run – a biker run through Pacific, Grover, St. Clair and Dittmer- brings friends of the two popular favorite sons together by benefitting the Jeff White Memorial Skate Park project.
Biker Turtle Johnson and skateboarder Jeffrey White had a lot in common. In their young lives, neither could ever be still and they each attracted fast-holding friends like barnacles to a ship’s hull.
The Turtle Run is an annual fundraising bash that memorializes Turtle Johnson, who died, surrounded by friends, of an out-of-the-blue heart attack during a biker campout on Sunday July 15, 2018. The fundraising event was inspired at his funeral on July 23, 2018 when a multitude of family and friends gathered to pay a final tribute.
In the waning hours of Turtle’s memorial celebration his daughter Mercedes Means sought out Norbert Gildehaus and Bob Masson in the outdoor Pacific American Legion pavilion and offered them a wad of bills she cradled in her hand.
“People kept handing this to me for Dad’s church,” she said.
“Dad’s church” was Historic First Baptist Church, 421 South First Street, damaged beyond use in the flood of 2017, which Gildehaus, whose business is a neighbor of the frequently flooded church and Masson, a supporter of the historic community landmark were raising funds to restore the 1873 church and adjoining education building..
Turtle, whose family home stood across West Pacific Street from the church, had cared for the historic frame sanctuary throughout his lifetime, mowing the grass and making minor repairs. When Gildehaus and Masson organized a fundraiser to restore and preserve the historic church following the 2017 flood, Turtle was the first individual to make a donation.
After six years and more than $200,000 in cash, material and labor donations from the community, the historic church has been completely rebuilt to last another hundred years and will be returned to the congregation to reopen for worship in the coming weeks.
“Turtle, and the whole community, I think, would want the little church to continue,” Gildehaus said.
Turtle’s sister Liz Jackson, asked Gildehaus, a seasoned biker friend of Turtle’s to help organize a memorial to Turtle.
“I guess we could do a little biker run,” he said. Gildehaus quickly attracted twenty of Turtles friends who wanted to help with the Turtle memorial
The first Turtle Run in 2018 attracted several hundred bikers, Turtle’s friends and family, and church supporters and raised $13.500 for the church restoration project. A second Turtle run in 2019 that topped the initial run also benefitted the church restoration project.
A 2021 run was postponed due to Covid. In 2022, the Turtle Run Committee suggested adding other benefactors for popular event. That year, the Run donated funds to the Tri-County Senior Center. In 2023, the committee chose to donate Run proceeds to the Jeff White Memorial Sate Park. The sixth annual Turtle run on June 1, 2024 will again benefit the memorial to another favorite son, Jeffrey White.
For three years, Jeff White’s friends Jarod Cattoor and Johnny Felts, a host of fellow skaters, and Jeff White’s parents, Paula and Jeffrey White, Sr. have been working to engage the community to help build a skate park in memory of the renowned child skater who lost his life in Afghanistan on April 3, 2012.
Talk of a skate park in Pacific has surfaced several times in recent decades but there was never a serious plan to fund the series of concrete ramps and half-pipes to create a valid skateboarding challenge.
White, who was killed April 3 when an IED exploded near his vehicle in Afghanistan, is the son of Paula and Jeffrey White Sr.
Gildehaus rode his chopper in the 66-motorcycle honor guard that escorted White’s remains and his family from the Lambert International Airport to the funeral home in Pacific.
After Jeffrey’s death, his friends and fellow skaters launched an effort to, once and for all, engage the community in a effort to build a skate park as a memorial to a skater who, in their memory, was “the best skater of all of us.”
Cost of that project is estimated at $300,000. The City of Pacific helped the Skatepark Committee apply for a grant to build the skatepark on a slope near the Noonan children’s pavilion in city park. The city also agreed to contribute one-half of the $150,000 match, which left the committee with the responsibility of raising $125,000.
“We are almost there,” Cattoor said in a recent Facebook post. “We’re getting very close.”
For Johnny Felts skateboarding as a sport is all about friendship as he recently said in a Facebook post.
“Getting together with friends, whether it be for Cornhole, a pool tournament, a poker run, a BBQ competition or a concert, the spirit of friendship represents a cornerstone of this skatepark, and that is reflected by the community that has supported this project over the last two years,” Felts said.
Another fun-on-wheels icon, Bigfoot 4X4, headquartered in Pacific has been a major supporter of the Jeffrey White Memorial Skatepark since the first year of fundraising.
The Steve Ewing Band, The Urge, staged a fundraiser concert at Lost Hills Lake to benefit the skatepark. Ewing and Felts also appeared on Fox News This Morning to promote the concert and the skatepark.
The Cigar Vault on St. Louis Street, Pacific and JP’s Bar and Grill in Eureka have also hosted evens to benefit the skatepark.
For Felts and Cattoor, the Jeff White Memorial Skatepark will be a place where youth can gather, play, and build friendships.
