Beaver County bridge to be named after deceased trooper from Canton Township
Trooper Blake Coble
A photo of Blake and Brenda Coble taken in 2001. Blake was working undercover at the time.
Blake Coble's Trinity High School senior photo
Courtesy of Brenda Coble
This undated family photo shows Blake and Brenda Coble and their children, Jim and Savannah.
Brenda was a dispatcher and Blake was a state trooper when a mutual friend set them up.
“We met on a blind date,” said Brenda Coble, of Beaver County. “It was pretty much history after that.”
They dated long distance for a year and a half before she transferred from Erie to be with Blake Coble, a Trinity graduate who grew up in Canton Township. They were married Oct. 18, 2003, and both worked out of the Beaver station of the state police. They often worked the same shift, she as a dispatcher and he as a trooper who for a while did undercover work.
“Whenever we worked together, I never worried about him,” Brenda Coble said in an interview. “He was the guy everyone wanted as their backup. He was a big guy and he knew what he was doing.”
That’s why she never expected the phone call she received from their station commander the morning of Oct. 4, 2012.
“He told me that Blake had been in a bad crash, that it didn’t look good and that I needed to get to the hospital,” Brenda said. “You had to know Blake – he could be very accident prone. For me to hear that he was in an accident and it didn’t look good, I really wasn’t thinking it was anything fatal.”
Blake Coble’s patrol car had been struck by a tractor-trailer that ran a stop sign at an intersection in South Beaver Township, Beaver County. He died from his injuries before he made it to the hospital, where Brenda had been waiting for him. Their children, Jim and Savannah, were ages 8 and 6 at the time.
“The first few years were tough,” Brenda said. “We had to adjust and learn. We’ve come a long way.”
On the sixth anniversary of his death, Brenda and her children will participate in a bridge dedication ceremony to honor Blake’s memory on Oct. 4 at St. Monica Church, 116 Thorndale Drive. The bridge to be named after him is on Darlington Road over Interstate 376.
“We cross over that to get to our church and less than a mile away is the cemetery where Blake is buried,” Brenda said. “So the kids are always going to see it.”
Brenda said Rep. Jim Marshall, who knew Blake, approached her last year to ask about naming a bridge after him.
“I thought it was a great idea,” Brenda said. “(Blake) would be very humbled that this is going on.”
Blake died at age 47, just three months from retiring after 24 years of service. Brenda said he had a kind heart and was a good officer, “fair and well-liked” by everyone he worked with.
“He was an amazing person,” she said. “He would do anything to help anyone. He was a hands-on dad, always helping out with activities at their school. Everything was about our family.”
Blake’s mother, Judy Coble of South Strabane, and his two younger sisters, Heather Frye and Julie Elling, both of Washington, had similar descriptions of Blake.
“If I had one word to describe Blake, it would be loyal,” Elling said. “He was the most loyal friend and family member. If you ever told Blake a secret, you know he took it to the grave with him.”
Frye and Blake’s mother also agreed that he had a talent for keeping secrets. He was also a great swimmer, they said. He was a member of Trinity’s swim team before graduating in 1982.
“He’s a hometown boy,” Elling said. “He was very proud of this town and his upbringing. He had a lot of friends around here.”
One of those friends who swam with Blake was David Weaver, who works at Donald R. Weaver Insurance in Washington. He and Blake went on to swim together for four years at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, W.Va., where they studied criminal justice together and shared a dorm room.
Weaver said Blake was “funny, outgoing and helpful.”
“He was just a really great guy,” Weaver said.
After college, Blake went to police academy in Hershey. Elling said he had always wanted to be a police officer.
“He was just a very black and white person – right was right and wrong was wrong,” Elling said. “He was always very straight-laced.”
Judy said Blake had always been happy with his job.
“He was just interested in being able to help people,” she said.
Both Elling and Frye called Blake a “typical” older brother and the family “rock.”
“We fought a lot, but I was always very, very proud of him,” Frye said.
They said that nine months after Blake died, their father, Tom Coble, died from an aggressive cancer.
“We lost two great guys in one year,” Judy said.
Judy said many folks in Washington County who knew Blake attended his funeral at Avery United Methodist Church in North Franklin Township.
“Everybody reached out to us and they all remember him still,” Judy said. “We’re just very pleased that they’re remembering him this way with the bridge.”
Frye agreed that having the bridge named after her brother will be a “wonderful dedication to him.”
“I had been wishing something like this would happen,” she said. “I’m so very proud of him.”