Steve Gates: Father, business owner, one-time mayor and ever-mentor, died Nov. 20 after a five-year cancer battle. He was 69. The business and youth sports programs that Gates founded will remain enduring legacies of a man who also served as Hood River mayor in the early 1990s. 

In April of 1987, only a month after the move to Hood River with his wife, Steve Gates opened Big Winds, Hood River News reported in an April 2018 Panorama article, reprinted below: 

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Steve Gates