Tag: Harley Davidson
Man Buried Riding His Harley Davidson
Man Buried Riding His Harley Davidson
84-year old Billy Standley of Mechanicsburg, Ohio, who recently died of lung cancer, was buried straddling his Harley Davidson motorcycle in a casket made of Plexiglas and plywood. According to his family, it was a funeral he started planning 18 years ago.
“This was his dream,” said one of his daughters, Dorothy Brown.
David Vernon, director of the Skillman, McDonald and Vernon Funeral Home in Mechanicsburg, said that, when Standley first asked him about it, Vernon gave him one condition:
“I told him, ‘I have no problem doing this for you, but I don’t want you to come off that motorcycle.’ ”
So Standley and his sons designed a brace that hooked into the bike and led up his back to surround his rib cage. Five years ago, Standley went before the Champaign County Board of Health, which told him he’d have to come up with a special vault and drain all the fluids out of the bike before he could be buried with it.
A company in Springfield designed a modified septic tank for a vault. He bought three plots in a cemetery outside Mechanicsburg, next to where his wife, Lorna, is buried, so there would be enough land to bury him.
Standley and his sons also designed his casket. They painted the wood bright green, like the fields Bill imagined riding through for eternity. They painted the floor black with a single white stripe, like the highway that would take him wherever he was headed after this life.
“He lived to ride,” said his son Roy Standley.
His life was the stuff of legends.
Patriot Of The Day – Erik Dunk Owner of Iron Block Harley Davidson
Our Patriot of the Day is Erik Dunk, owner of Iron Block Harley Davidson located in Adams Center, New York, for having had the guts to tell it like it is.
“I’m not going to stop what I believe,” Iron Block Harley Davidson Owner Erik Dunk said.
Wednesday, the electronic sign out in front of the Iron Block Harley Davidson in Adams Center read this: “Obama are you kidding? We’re not Muslim. You are not Christian.”
It was all in reference to comments President Obama made last week.
Obama had said, “If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”
Thursday, it simply said the time and listed a couple of upcoming events.
Shop owner Erik Dunk says Harley Davidson got involved after a motorist complaint and told him they wanted him to remove it.
“I have put things that I felt were incorrect that President Bush did with no problem. I’ve had a number of things up I felt President Obama did that were beyond the scope of our constitution that were improper that got no response. As soon as I put the ‘M’ (muslim) word up, that’s when things started to really boil,” Dunk said.
Dunk says reaction he got to News 10 Now’s story Wednesday actually showed him just how much support he has across the nation.
“I’ve gotten calls from California, from Madison, Wisconsin, down in Hamilton and downstate down by Long Island. We’ve been getting calls and each and every one of them are, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing.’ ‘We support you 100 percent.’ ‘What can we do?'” said Dunk.
On Wednesday, Dunk told us he had no intention of removing the message. But a call later in the day from Harley Davidson’s main office about the franchise agreement changed that.
“Let’s say it was just me and Harley Davidson. I’d fight it tooth and nail because I wouldn’t really care what they did to me. The problem is I’ve got 20 to 30 people relying on me for their livelihoods,” said Dunk.
Now while Dunk says his sign on Route 81 will no longer have political messages, he does say he’ll continue the practice at a property he owns nearby on Route 11. Although he does say it’ll lose a lot of its impact due to being out of the way.
A Harley Davidson spokesman says franchise contracts have provisions aimed to prevent dealers from displaying religious or political messages on anything brand associated. He says Harley has a diverse group of customers and takes their values very seriously. He would not say if Harley Davidson threatened to pull Dunk’s franchise agreement.
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