The April 16 shooting at Virginia Tech hit home with Homer Wright.
“We just felt like we needed to do something good,” says the former Virginia State Trooper.
So Wright, owner of Milwaukee Iron 2 in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the sister shop of Lynchburg’s Milwaukee Iron, did what he does best. He built a motorcycle, with a little help from his friends.
The Virginia Tech Memorial Bike will be unveiled at a bike show this weekend at the James River Conference Center in Lynchburg. The show, which will feature the Tech bike and six to eight others, is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday. There is a $5 cover charge.
In October, the bike will be auctioned off in Las Vegas. Wright says the proceeds from that, as well as the Lynchburg bike show, will be donated to individual scholarship funds set up in honor of the victims.
The project was a labor of love for Wright, who spent four months soliciting donated parts and money for the bike.
Companies from all over the country donated to the build. Randy Simpson, owner of Milwaukee Iron in Lynchburg, provided steel for the motorcycle’s metal frame.
“My daughter goes to UVa, but every college around was supporting Virginia Tech,” Simpson says. “We are Hokie country (in Lynchburg).
“Hopefully, some people will get some good out of (the bike’s creation).”
The actual work started at the beginning of February, when Dirty South Choppers in Palmyra put together the frame. Simpson got a crack at it next, when he, Wright and several others spent about a week fabricating the bike.
“What we have to do is go in and complement what (Dirty South Choppers) set up,” Simpson says.
Then the bike went back to Wright’s Myrtle Beach shop for some more work and later got its maroon-and-orange paint job from the staff at Razor Custom Paint Shop in Stafford.
Wright says Virginia Tech didn’t endorse the bike, so he couldn’t use any university logos on it.
But “I did what I could do with what I had,” Wright says.
And he’s thrilled with the finished product.
“It’s spectacular,” Wright says. “I’ve seen people walk in (to see it) and cry. You have to be there to see it. It’s like a memorial. You see Virginia Tech in it.”
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