CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Lincoln Journal Star. | Posted: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 7:00 pm
Get rid of it. That picture in the window of their red Saturn. That picture of their Gina, smiling out at the other drivers down in Arizona. Gina’s face and her parents’ plea: Missing From Lincoln. Call Crime Stoppers if you have any information…
Maybe they mean well, Dee Rap thinks. Get over it, get on with your life, look how long it’s been… But they haven’t lost a daughter. So the mother just ignores them. She swallows her words. She walks away. The picture stays.
And this happens a lot, too: A petite woman walks by, walking the way Gina walked with a lilt in her step, the same auburn hair.
Dee’s heart stops, just for a second. She knows it’s not her daughter. She knows it’s not Regina Bos, 42-year-old Lincoln mother of three, missing since Oct. 17, 2000, last seen outside Duggan’s Pub in downtown Lincoln.
She sneaks a look. She knows she’ll see a stranger’s face, but she can’t stop herself.
“I don’t think it’s her, but I want it to be,” Dee says Thursday, back in Lincoln where she and Carl raised seven kids before moving to Arizona last year.
Carl and Dee will be at Meadowlark Coffeehouse Sunday afternoon. They’ll listen to their daughters sing — Jannel and Leann and Tammy. And their son, Von, too.
They hope all their kids will be here to remember Gina.
Before the concert, they’ll gather across the street from Duggan’s. Dee will bring the sign she made: a piece of poster board with Gina’s picture.
“Bring me home,” the sign says in big letters. “It’s been five long years.”
They’ll sing some songs. They’ll remember.
No one has ever been arrested in Gina’s disappearance.
Lincoln Police Detective Greg Sorensen thinks he’s talked to her killer. He won’t say much more. Only that the killer should call him. Let him know where the body is.
Her family knows Gina is dead.
“If she were alive we would know,” her mother says. “She would have never left her children. Never. Ever.”
Gina was a single mom with two sons and a little girl. Her family joked that she had a fourth child: Harley, her guitar.
The guitar was in the trunk of her Saturn that night. She put it there after playing at open mike at the downtown bar.
And then she was gone.
Her big sister Jannel Rap started an organization in California — G.I.N.A. For Missing Persons: Greater Information Now Available For Missing Persons.
She’s staged dozens of concerts, hosted a television series on missing Americans and is working on another.
At the coffeehouse Sunday, the group will let people know about other missing adults from the Midwest.
“Jannel’s done so much,” her mother says. “Gina would be so proud.”
Just the other day, Carl was driving on the freeway near their new home. A car zoomed by. The woman driving, she looked so much like Gina.
He froze behind the wheel. The woman slowed down, looking at that sign in the window. Looking at Gina’s face.
Get over it … Get on with your life…
Carl and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year.
Gina would have loved that. She loved holidays and parties. She never forgot anyone’s birthday. She gave the best cards for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
If the kids needed a costume for Halloween, Gina would whip one up. If anyone needed cheering up, Gina would be there.
Dee looks in the mirror. She needs a new hairstyle. She wishes Gina was here. Gina could fix it just the way she likes it.
Sometimes Dee and Carl need cheering up. There are so many emotions. Anger and sadness and love.
And wanting to know: Who took Gina? What happened to their girl?
They let God deal with it, because they can’t.
Get rid of it … Take that sign down…
She’ll take the sign down, Dee says.
“When we find her.”
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
If you go
Early on Oct. 17, 2000, Regina Bos, a Lincoln mother of three, disappeared outside Duggan’s Pub. Local musicians and family members will honor Bos from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at Meadowlark Coffeehouse, 1624 South St.
You can help
If you have any information on the disappearance of Regina Bos, call Lincoln Police Detective Greg Sorensen at 441-7708 or go to www.411Gina.org