Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Group seeks permanent home for MC memorial
Fifty-five white crosses adorn Steve Humphrey’s hill overlooking Dry Creek just off Danaher Road near Steptoe. Each memorializes a deceased friend, relative or lover who was passionate about motorcycles.
“It’s definitely a solemn place. A place of spiritual reverence,” said Humphrey in an interview on his Black Cat Ranch. “This is all in honor and respect for fallen riders.”
Now, he and a group of his friends and fellow riders are planning a bigger memorial to riders from across the nation. Humphrey said the group, dubbed the National Motorcycle Rider’s Memorial, would like to site the national monument in this region, ideally in Whitman County.
Humphrey has been riding motorcycles since he was a teenager, collecting friends from around the country in his myriad travels.
He saw Malcom Forbes fly over the annual rally in Sturgis, S.D., in 1973. Humphrey’s motorcycle credentials run deep. Biker friends from all over the country meet at Humphrey’s place yearly for a get-together.
One of them was Russ Nealy.
Nealy, who Humphrey said was always the life of the party, died during a routine surgery in 2001. Nealy’s funeral was complete with a full escort of motorcycles, Humphrey remembered.
In 2003, two friends brought the sissy bar (back support) from Nealy’s bike and placed it on Humphrey’s Badger Mountain backyard.
Not long after that, long-time friend Gary Hammer died, and his motorcycle’s sissy bar, with a hammer welded to it, was placed next to Nealy’s on Humphrey’s hill.
As more and more of his friends noticed the memorials, they began to ask if they could place markers on the hill alongside those of Nealy and Hammer.
“Now, people go up there and they come back awful quiet. It gets to be a pretty emotional place,” said Humphrey. “I see what we’re doing here as a great service to the people who have died - to our friends.”
During their regular get-together, Humphrey and his friends bang a chime made out of a harrow disc to honor their fallen friends.
The collection has grown to include five rows of 11 crosses, all made by Humphrey out of wood with names of the fallen riders etched into metal plaques on their faces.
Dennis Merry, a friend from Colfax, said he put one up in memory of Randy Burns, a fellow classmate from the Colfax High School class of 1967.
Merry said Burns died in a fatal accident after he was run off the road by a big truck shortly after getting his first bike.
No bodies are buried at the site. Who wants to worry about bones in the back yard, asked Humphrey.
Several have asked about having ashes dumped on the Badger Mountain, but Humphrey said there are murky legalities of how to properly dispose of human remains.
There’s even a memorial cross on the hill for Janis Joplin, the memorial’s first celebrity cross. It was put there by Monica Pabst, a singer from Spokane.
Now, Humphrey and his friends hope to expand the memorial off the hill above the Black Cat Ranch and onto a more permanent, prominent site.
They formed an organization, the National Motorcycle Rider’s Memorial. They have pamphlets, patches, T-shirts. They’ve held meetings.
“What we want to do is take this memorial site and kind of graduate it into a national motorcycle memorial,” said Scott Storch, a fellow rider and vice president of the NMRM.
Humphrey said they are looking at locations. He has looked at sites all over the Inland Empire. Dream sites would include the former hotel atop the Lewiston Grade or the now-defunct state park at Central Ferry.
The NMRM board is planning to meet with chambers of commerce from around the area to gauge the level of local support for the memorial.
Such a site, they said, could bring riders from all across the country to see and remember their fallen friends and brothers.
“This is something that could really bring a lot of people in to the area,” said Humphrey. “It has the ability to be a huge generator of tax dollars to any place it’s set up.”
They have a seriously dedicated core of volunteer supporters who are pushing to make the memorial happen.
A fundraiser ride was held around Odessa last month, generating an estimated $3,000 toward the NMRM goal. The event included an evening concert, day-long rides, auctions and a sunset memorial service.
The group attained federal non-profit status and is accepting donations through its web site.
The web site also includes a “virtual memorial” where anyone can enter information to memorialize their motorcycle-enthused loved ones.
Humphrey said the site has attracted interest from bikers from all over the U.S. and beyond.
“Sweden,” he said. “I don’t know why, but we’ve gotten interest from Sweden.”
In the meantime, they have thier place on the Black Cat Ranch to remember their loved ones who have passed.
More information about the NMRM and photos of observances on the Badger Mountain Motorcycle Riders Memorial is available on the group’s web site:
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