Josh Stewart stood next to his wife Cassie and peered out over the crowd.
Just a thousand feet or so beyond them was the intersection where their son Liam, a seventh grader at Euclid Middle School in Littleton, was killed by a driver in October 2023.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last year,” Stewart told the hundreds of friends and community members gathered Thursday morning.
A year ago, Stewart didn’t think that much about street safety. But in the weeks and months since his son died, he’s immersed himself in issues like roads that are designed for speed over safety and the high pedestrian death rates in the U.S. and Colorado. He’s also pushed Littleton leaders to make its streets safer by installing bike lanes and enacting other safety changes.
“Learning what's so wrong with so many things and that there are these voices out there just yelling into the wind that we're not listening to, that we didn't hear before this tragedy,” he said in an interview. “It's woken me up.”
Now, he was ready to share his knowledge and challenge the crowd gathered for a memorial walk and bike from the school to a nearby library — one of Liam’s favorite places.
“As we're making this ride, I want you to think about your children,” Stewart told them. “The elderly people in your family and your lives that may not have a car making their way up to the library. I want you to look at how the road is, and I want you to think, ‘Is this street designed for everyone or was it designed for cars?’ ”
One of the kids on the memorial ride was Liam’s friend Grayson Mandt.
Grayson and his mother Maria saw the driver hit Liam. The pair were walking to school and were just a block away when Liam passed them on his bicycle, Maria said. Seconds later, he was hit.
“He was doing nothing wrong,” said Maria, who administered CPR to Liam. “He was wearing a helmet, he was in the bike lane and it didn't matter. It didn’t matter.”
At the time, the bike lane in question was marked only by paint on the pavement.
Maria remembers the crash vividly. Her son, Grayson, doesn’t.
“My mind has fogged out,” Grayson said, adding: “I don’t want to remember that.”
What Grayson does remember is his classmate’s bubbly personality. His endless optimism.
“All the good things I do remember,” Grayson said.
Littleton recently added protection to those bike lanes and says more improvements are on their way.
In the months after Liam’s death, the Littleton City Council vowed to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians by focusing on infrastructure, traffic enforcement and public education. That marks a shift for what has historically mostly been an automobile-dominated suburb, said Mayor Kyle Schlachter.
“It still is,” Schlachter said in an interview. “But there are people here that want to be able to walk and bike and to make sure that we have the infrastructure that meets the needs of the people that are here right now.”
The city has been experimenting with small pilot projects that could be expanded, including new crosswalks, curb extensions that narrow streets at intersections, and protected bike lanes.
Stewart and other street safety advocates have been pushing for the city to accelerate their work. Benjamin Traquair, a co-founder of Littleton Social Cycle, said he’d like to see the city quickly move beyond testing out ideas.
“We sort of already know what good bike infrastructure looks like and what works,” Traquair said. “We know the values of bike lanes and protected bike lanes. So while it is nice that there's something going up, I think we'd prefer to see more ambitious projects.”
The group pedaled and walked to Bemis Library, where a memorial bench was unveiled.
Emily Dykes rode a fixed-gear cruiser with her 2-year-old son, Dewey. They ride nearly every day, she said, usually to downtown Littleton. Drivers often don’t see them, she said, because they don’t even think to look for people outside of cars.
“We almost got hit a couple of weeks ago,” she said. “It was terrifying.”
But scares like that aren’t enough to make Dykes stay home.
“We’ll never stop riding,” she said. “It’s our joy.”
On Thursday, the crowd gradually gathered around the Stewart family once more. They unveiled a stone bench inscribed with lyrics to a song from Liam’s favorite TV show — “Adventure Time.” One of his former teachers strummed chords and sang:
Time is an illusion that helps things make sense
So we are always living in the present tense
It seems unforgiving when a good thing ends
But you and I will always be back then
You and I will always be back then
A cold wind blew, and Josh and Cassie Stewart held each other close.
