COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) – A Colorado veteran has paid tribute to Gannon Stauch, the 11-year-old boy who captured the eye of individuals worldwide along with his disappearance and homicide. 

FOX31’s Nicole Fierro and Byron Stewart took a visit to Colorado Springs to see the proprietor of Bopat Guitars, who had a novel manner of honoring Stauch.

Should you choose a musician by the guitar they play, then Bob Rogers is strumming the fitting strings. The life-long musician and carpenter mixed his two passions to create his personal custom-made guitars. Rogers’ approach struck a chord with musicians now asking him to create for them.

“It’s superior that type of a factor can occur,” Rogers stated. “Everybody has a narrative.”

Rogers’ firm Bopat Guitars was constructed upon the idea that {custom} guitars inform a narrative, particularly, the story of the client. The designs and kind of meals add texture and colour to the story. For a veteran in restoration, Rogers picked a specific kind of maple wooden.

“A tree that’s mainly rotting and so they lower it down earlier than it’s fully rotted,” he stated. “Then, we convey it again to life by constructing guitars out of it. That very a lot resonated with that veteran.”

Earlier than he was creating with clients’ tales in thoughts, Rogers made his personal guitar throughout a monumental time in his life.

“I began constructing that and referred to as it ‘Restoration’ as a result of we have been going by means of the lack of our grandson to suicide throughout COVID.”

Rogers’ grandson Michael handed away at 13-years-old. Precisely eight months earlier than his passing, one other equally aged boy in the identical neighborhood was killed, and his identify was Gannon Stauch. Rogers referred to as Gannon his second grandson in heaven.

“Each guitar that we do, we honor our two misplaced grandsons,” he defined.

On each Bopat guitar, there’s a tribute to Gannon and Michael branded into the corporate brand.

Michael is represented with a semi-colon earlier than the letter B and Gannon is honored with the underlined G in guitar.

“I feel it’s simply a good way to honor two younger males gone too quickly, manner too quickly,” Rogers stated. “There’s a way of finality and there’s additionally a way of hope after I have a look at that.”