Saturday, Nov. 3 will mark the 8th annual Grumpy’s 5k in Wareham, a unique race that takes participants through bogs at the A.D. Makepeace property along Tihonet Road and ends with a cranberry-themed dinner.

The event is held in honor of Bob Conway, a former A.D. Makepeace employee, naturalist and photographer known to many as ‘Grumpy’.

Conway passed away suddenly in the winter of 2009, leaving behind a legacy of conservation that still affects the cranberry industry to this day.

“He noticed things in the bogs that other people didn’t,” recalled Claire Smith, Conway’s sister and Wareham’s town moderator. “He was a very quiet person with a big influence.”

Conway began his career with A.D. Makepeace while attending Wareham High School in the 1960s. Following his graduation in 1963, he would go on to study at UMASS Amherst and eventually join the war in Vietnam as a Power Generation Equipment Mechanic.

He’d return to Wareham and A.D. Makepeace as a bog foreman. He knew every inch of land owned by the company, Smith said, from Cape Cod to Carver.

Conway was the company's designated frost management supervisor, responsible for overseeing the protection of cranberry vines in the fall and spring. He was also Makepeace’s informal environmental officer, launching several initiatives to protect local plant and animal species through the use of photography.

“He never went anywhere on the bogs without his camera,” Smith said. “He documented all kinds of plants and animals that no one even knew were there.”

Conway used his photos to show officials at A.D. Makepeace the endangered plants growing along the bogs, including orchids, and encouraged them to look for alternatives to harmful pesticides.

He also encouraged the company to build birdhouses which helped to bring bluebirds back to the South Coast.

Conway would go on to work with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

His last project would be in the Plymouth Pine Barrens, Smith said, where Conway helped to develop a forest management plan with the state.

“He made a lot of people more aware of their surroundings,” she said. “And he left me with hundreds of beautiful pictures.”

A grand total of 265 participants attended last year’s 5k in Conway’s honor, and this year Smith expects the event will see over 300.

All proceeds from the race will benefit the Cranberry Educational Foundation which awards scholarships to students in 27 different cranberry growing communities.

“It our way of giving back and continuing Grumpy’s legacy,” Smith said. “If there was anything he taught us, it was the value of education.”

Advanced registration and number pick-up for Grumpy’s 5k will be on Friday, Nov. 2 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the Box Mill Hall in Tihonet Village.

Registration the day of the event will run from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. in the same location.

To register online, click here.