ARGYLE — Mark Wolfe jumped on his motorcycle about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday for a quick trip to the grocery store.

He didn’t return.

“He just went after bread and milk and yogurt, and I called and called,” said his wife, Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe, who is a staff writer at the Denton Record-Chronicle. “Finally, someone else answered his cellphone. They said they didn’t like to do it this way, but they told me that he was dead.”

Wolfe, 51, was heading northbound on U.S. Highway 377 in Roanoke when a pickup pulled through a stop sign at Hillsborough Street into the path of his motorcycle. The driver wasn’t seriously injured, but Wolfe was declared dead at the scene.

Information was not available from Roanoke police, but Troy Taylor, chief investigator for the Denton County medical examiner’s office, said Wolfe was wearing a helmet. He died of blunt-force trauma, Taylor said.

Taylor said the pickup faced a stop sign and the speed limit there is 55 mph, but he did not have information about whether any citations were issued.

Heinkel-Wolfe is the regional reporter at the Record-Chronicle. Her husband was a musician and a truck driver. They have three teenage children — Sam, Michael and Paige. Sam is a student at North Central Texas College, and Michael and Paige are students at Argyle High School.

Mark Wolfe was a tuba player and had played in bands in the area and taught private lessons in the Grapevine school district, said Vurl Bland, his friend and fellow tuba player.

Grapevine High School band members planned to dedicate their concert Wednesday night to Wolfe, Bland said.

And a group both men belong to will remember him at upcoming “Tuba Christmas” performances in Dallas and Fort Worth, he said.

“He was so cordial, so down to earth, so easygoing,” Bland said. “And always a good musician. He had that special insight into the music that brought it to life.”

University of North Texas journalism professor George Getschow has been editing Heinkel-Wolfe’s book, See Sam Run, which will soon be published by the UNT Press. The book is about the couple’s journey to understand and adapt to their son, Sam, who is autistic.

Getschow said he came to know Mark Wolfe first through the book and then from sitting in his living room while he worked with Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe.

“Mark is a central character in the book,” Getschow said. “It is the story of [Peggy’s] journey with Mark in learning to raise an autistic child. Mark had a hard time in the early years. It’s about a father coming to terms over the years with an autistic son — how he grows in his relationship with Sam. A relationship and a bond formed between the father and the son that she really cherished.”

Getschow said Heinkel-Wolfe at first tried to soft-pedal the struggles her husband had with his son’s disability. But her husband wouldn’t let her, Getschow said. He understood that the story needed to show his failures so it could show the success of the journey he made.

“It’s the story of a family discovering the beauty and magnificence of their son under what appears to be, on the surface, a major disability. It’s a powerful story for all of us. The thing I admire most about Mark is that he told her to tell that story without removing the blemishes.

“With Mark’s death,” Getschow said, “it leaves a big hole in the narrative of their lives.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com.