Maynard R. Sembower witnessed the construction of the Western Maryland Railway, rode it as a child and adult, saw its final days of passenger and freight service, and took delight in seeing its right-of-way reborn as a rail-trail. Proud that the first segment of the new bike trail in Somerset County began in his beloved Rockwood on 24 April, 1993, and extended seven and a half miles to the Pinkerton Low Bridge, he closely followed the trail's progress from a home only five houses away. After his wife, Edna, died in 1992, he devoted himself to the new trail by sharing printed information, directing visitors to local businesses, and selling T-shirts to bicyclists, first from the trunk of his car, then from a card table, and finally from a small wooden building he and his son-in-law, Roger Romesburg, designed. Dedicated as the Sembower Visitor Center in 2006, that building reflected his role as a welcoming presence for Rockwood and the Great Allegheny Passage, where visitors came from around the world to meet the man known as "The Ambassador." A retired law-enforcement officer for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, he died of congestive heart failure at the Hospice House in Somerset in September 2009 at age 100, and his daughter Carol Sembower Romesburg remembered him as a man devoted to his family, his town, and the trail, which had been his life for his last 17 years.