Watercraft creator made Ohiopyle a whitewater rafting destination
For Tom Love, a day on the rapids was a day well spent.
A self-deprecating wit and brilliant inventor with a passion for the natural world, Mr. Love created the iconic Shredder, the first frameless, inflatable cataraft — a combination catamaran and raft.
Long recognized as a local legend and as one of a small handful of people who put Ohiopyle, Fayette County, on the map as an international destination for whitewater rafting, Mr. Love, 65, died Monday of liver failure. He lived in Stewart, the township that surrounds Ohiopyle.
“He’s influenced more people than you can imagine,” said Travis Cowles, of Confluence, Somerset County, one of two former employees who took over Mr. Love’s company, Airtight Inflatables, when he retired in April. “He was a character. He always had a story or a joke. He found a way to laugh about everything and make life fun.”
Mr. Love found his passion for the outdoors growing up in Beaver, where he often explored the Ohio and Beaver rivers, said his daughter, Amanda Love Callahan, of Stewart.
“When he was 16 or so, he was involved in Canoe Trails, a program that took kids out and got them on rivers via canoes,” she said.
After that, Mr. Love got a summer job working as a Youghiogheny River guide at Mountain Streams and Trails, an Ohiopyle rafting company.
“He just fell in love with Ohiopyle, the small town and whitewater rafting,” she said.
It was in his job as a fulltime guide that Mr. Love met Dolores Niglio, from Philadelphia, who came to Ohiopyle for a tour of the Youghiogheny River. The couple married on June 18, 1977, and recently celebrated their 43rd anniversary with a day trip to West Virginia.
Mr. Love eventually began a career repairing rafts and boats and by the early 1980s was a much sought-after shipwright.
“He was really good at it, and at the time, they were figuring out what did and didn’t work with materials like glues,” Mr. Cowles said. “He traveled all over the place, collecting boats for repair.”
All the while, Mr. Love was dabbling in boat building, taking the lessons he learned from repairing boats to build experimental watercraft.
His life changed in 1986, when a videographer commissioned Mr. Love to build the rubber tubes for a cataraft that he would use to film customers rafting down the Tully River in Australia.
When the frame-maker didn’t hold up his end of the deal, necessity became the mother of invention for Mr. Love, who finished the project himself by creating cross tubes, designing an inflatable cataraft with all soft parts.
But Mr. Love had to be sure his Frankenstein craft would work. Rapids on the Tully River are rated as Class IV — not for beginners.
Trusting his instincts, Mr. Love convinced another daredevil to join him, and they, illegally, took it over the legendary Ohiopyle Falls — a drop of 20 feet.
“They just went and did it,” said Mr. Cowles, who laughed while recalling the VHS footage of the test. “They weren’t wearing helmets. Tom falls out and his hat falls off, so he had to fish it out of the river afterwards. It has to be the epitome of the 1980s with just a total lack of safety.”
But the foldable rubber craft performed admirably, and Mr. Love sent it on to Australia for his customer.
“That was the birth of the Shredder in 1986,” Mr. Cowles said. “It was such a success that they asked for a dozen more.”
In the years since, Shredder enthusiasts have formed something of a cult following, meeting for river trips throughout the world and even holding their own festivals in the 1990s.
“The Shredder community is so huge, and they all really loved my dad for what he created,” Mrs. Love Callahan said. “We’ve been getting people sharing their favorite memories in the past few days. I didn’t realize how many people my dad touched until everyone started reaching out. It’s almost healing to just feel their love.”
For decades, Mr. Love traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada riding rapids, promoting his products and making friends, but it was Ohiopyle and the river that runs through it that most inspired him, his daughter said.
“He once told me that the favorite part of his day was just getting to drive through Ohiopyle and past the Yough to and from work,” she said.
Her father was mechanically inclined in other ways, too, Mrs. Love Callahan said.
“Growing up, we never had a new car because he could always fix our old cars,” she said. “And he built our house from wood and logs he got from an old cabin and barn.”
Mr. Love shared his love of nature with his children and often took them on rafting expeditions.
“My favorite memory is him introducing us to the sport and getting us on the river,” said his daughter, who also met her husband when she worked as a river guide.
“He shared with us the water and the rivers that he loved. His love for it filtered into us and it lives within me, and I want to do that for my kids.”
Along with his wife and daughter, Mr. Love is survived by a son, Colby, of
Morgantown, W.Va.; two siblings, Robert, of Columbia Falls, Mont., and Lee Ann Chambers, of Indianapolis.; and two grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned for Sunday at 11 a.m. at Stewart on the Green Park in Ohiopyle.
Memorial donations are suggested to the Tom Love Memorial Fund at: https:// www.gofundme.com/f/tomlove-memorial-fund.