Former AD goes great heights to mend his heart.

Byline: Ron Bellamy The Register-Guard

They met in the old press box on the north side of Autzen Stadium, back in the early 1980s, back in simpler, struggling times for Oregon athletics.

He was the Oregon athletic director. An outsider, who had come to Eugene in 1981 from the University of Michigan, where he had spent two decades as an athlete, coach and administrator. She was a press box volunteer, a graduate of Springfield High School, the daughter of a Springfield fire chief.

He was stoic, and could appear aloof. She was vivacious, outgoing and attracted friends like a magnet.

They began dating about a year after they met, and in 1984 he got offered another job, as director of athletics at The Ohio State University. He wouldn't go without her, so he proposed, and they met during a lunch hour at the Lane County Courthouse, and there Rick Bay married Denice Nave.

She went with him to Columbus, where she once kicked the governor of Michigan out of the Buckeye AD's suite during a tense football game, when the governor had the temerity to cheer for a play that went Michigan's way.

She was with him when he resigned, in 1988, because the Ohio State president went over his head to fire the football coach, Earle Bruce, who had won, just not enough.

And so they went to New York, where he was the chief operating officer of the New York Yankees for about a year, and when that ended - and doesn't it always, working for George Steinbrenner? - they went to the University of Minnesota, where he was AD for three years, and then to Cleveland, where he was the president of the Indians during the construction of Jacobs Field.

He worked in consulting for a couple of years - she had her own career, working for Club Corporation of America as a membership director for various properties - and then in 1995 they went to San Diego, where he was AD at San Diego State until resigning in 2003.

They traveled everywhere together. Tibet, Nepal, South Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Cuba, North Korea, Rwanda, where they saw gorillas in the wild and visited an orphanage that touched their hearts. They had no children of their own, and in Cuba and Rwanda, she'd see kids who didn't have anything, and give away the clothes she had packed.

They retired to Palm Desert, Calif., and made a side trip last month, to Morro Bay, drawn by the cooler breezes of the Pacific Ocean. It was there, on Tuesday, Aug. 28, that Denice Bay died in a single-car accident at age 53.

"There is a hole in my heart that you can drive a truck through," Rick Bay said.

They had spent the previous day up the coast in Monterey, and she had driven back. They were going to work out at a local fitness center; she was driving there, and Rick Bay, who often jogs five miles a day at age 64, was running to meet her there.

During his run, he heard the sirens. And never imagined. ...

It took him 40-some minutes to run to the club. She wasn't there, hadn't been there. He called the police, identified himself. Stay there, they said. And he knew.

Denice Bay had suffered, over the years, from brief, periodic seizures and taken medication to control the condition, Rick Bay said. She apparently suffered a seizure while driving, crashed into an embankment and died instantly. Nobody else was hurt; "a miracle," Bay said, gratefully.

There will be a memorial service in Eugene at 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, at the Downtown Athletic Club, and another later this fall in Palm Desert. "She was an Oregon girl," Bay said. "She was so proud to be a Duck. She had a lot of friends in Oregon."

Denice Bay is survived by her parents, Virgil and Yvonne Nave, of La Pine, and by her brothers, Rodney and Steven. And by her husband of 23 years.

Rick Bay himself won't be in Eugene for the service. Earlier this year, he was offered a chance to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He turned it down. And then, in the days after Denice died, he thought again about the tallest mountain on the African continent, and the times he and Denice spent together in Africa.

"It was a like a thunderbolt from God," Bay said. "It sounded so therapeutic and spiritual to me."

And so next week, Rick Bay will travel to Tanzania, to spend nine days hiking up the mountain, a journey of the soul, and at almost 20,000 feet he'll scatter some of Denice's ashes to the winds.

Contributions in memory of Denice Bay may be sent to the Rick and Denice Bay Foundation, c/o The San Diego Foundation, 2508 Historic Decatur Road, Suite 200, San Diego, Calif., 92106. Donations will be dedicated to the Imbabazi Children's Orphanage in Gisenyi, Rwanda.