The sign was spray-painted on plywood and propped against the fence at Miller’s Curve where my son died: “ANOTHER BIKER DIES HERE – GOOD RIDDANCE! ONE LESS MENACE.”
I’d been riding this road for forty-two years, knew every pothole and crack, but seeing those words made me forget how to breathe.
My boy Tommy wasn’t a menace. He was twenty-six, an EMT who spent his weekends teaching motorcycle safety courses, and he died because the county refused to fix the drainage problem that turned that curve into a death trap every time it rained.
I pulled over, my sixty-eight-year-old hands shaking with rage, and called my lawyer. Then I called every rider I knew. Because whoever wrote those words was about to learn why you don’t dishonor the dead, especially when that dead kid had saved more lives than most people ever touch.
The morning was still cold when I dismounted, my knees protesting as they always did these days. The sign had been there at least a few hours – the paint was dry, and morning dew had settled on the wood. Someone had planned this, waited for nightfall, and deliberately chose this spot where Tommy’s blood had mixed with rainwater just three weeks ago.
I took photos from every angle, my phone trembling in my grip. Forty-two years of riding, and I’d seen plenty of hate directed at bikers. Been called names, been refused service, been treated like a criminal for choosing two wheels over four. But this – celebrating my son’s death – this was something else entirely.
My name is Jake Morrison, and I’ve buried too many brothers over the years. But burying your own child breaks something inside you that never heals right. Tommy wasn’t supposed to die before me. He was careful, skilled, always preached ATGATT – All The Gear, All The Time. The night he died, he was coming home from a twelve-hour shift, still wearing his uniform under his riding jacket.
The curve that killed him had claimed three other lives in five years. Not all bikers – there’d been two cars as well. The drainage system, installed in the seventies, couldn’t handle heavy rain. Water would pool right at the apex of the turn, invisible at night, turning asphalt into ice. We’d petitioned the county repeatedly. Tommy had personally delivered a folder of accident reports to the commissioner’s office.
“Not in the budget,” they’d said. “Maybe next fiscal year.”
Now my boy was dead, and someone thought it was worth celebrating.
I heard bikes approaching before I saw them – the familiar rumble of Harleys mixed with the higher pitch of sport bikes. Word traveled fast in our community. Within an hour, Miller’s Curve was lined with motorcycles, riders standing in small groups, staring at the sign.
“This is sick,” muttered Big Mike, a plumber who’d taught Tommy to wrench on bikes when he was twelve. “Who does something like this?”
Sarah, one of Tommy’s fellow EMTs who rode a Triumph, was taking her own photos. “We need to document everything. This is beyond free speech – this is targeted harassment.”
But it was when Father Patrick arrived on his Road King that I knew this had spread beyond just the riding community. The Catholic priest had blessed bikes at our annual memorial ride for fifteen years, but I’d never seen him this angry.
“This is desecration,” he said, his Irish accent thicker with emotion. “That boy saved lives. He sat with dying people on the worst nights of their lives, held their hands, told them they weren’t alone.” He turned to me. “Jake, what do you need?”
What I needed was my son back. What I needed was for the county to have fixed that drainage years ago. What I needed was to find whoever wrote those words and make them understand the magnitude of their cruelty.
“I need the truth to matter,” I said finally.
By noon, local news had arrived. The reporter, a young woman who looked uncomfortable among so many bikers, approached me cautiously.
“Mr. Morrison? Can you tell us about the sign?”
I pointed to the curve, my voice steady despite the fire in my chest. “Three weeks ago, my son died here because the county won’t fix a known hazard. He was coming home from saving lives, hit standing water that shouldn’t exist, and lost control. Now someone thinks his death is worth celebrating because he rode a motorcycle.”
“And what’s your response to whoever posted the sign?”
I looked directly at the camera. “I want them to know who Tommy was. I want them to explain to the six-year-old girl he pulled from a burning car last year why they think he deserved to die. I want them to tell the elderly man whose life Tommy saved with CPR at a grocery store why one less ‘menace’ is a good thing.”
The interview was interrupted by the arrival of a county sheriff’s cruiser. Deputy Williams, whom I’d known for twenty years, looked embarrassed as he approached.
“Jake, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a complaint. You’re creating a traffic hazard.”
“A traffic hazard?” Sarah stepped forward. “That curve is a traffic hazard. That sign celebrating someone’s death is a hazard to human decency. But sure, the real problem is people peacefully gathering to mourn.”
Williams shifted uncomfortably. “I’m just doing my job. You need to disperse.”
“Actually,” said a voice from the crowd, “they don’t.”
A woman in a business suit stepped forward, extending her hand to me. “Amanda Chen, ACLU attorney. I ride too – Honda Shadow. Heard about this and thought you might need representation.”
The deputy’s expression changed. “No one’s under arrest.”
“Good,” Amanda said. “Because peacefully assembling on public property to protest hate speech is protected activity. Unless you’re prepared to explain to a judge why you dispersed grieving people while leaving that sign standing?”
Williams retreated to his cruiser to radio for instructions. Meanwhile, more people kept arriving. Not just bikers now – Tommy’s coworkers from the hospital, families he’d helped, people who’d taken his safety courses. The gathering was becoming something bigger than a response to hate.
Dr. Martinez from the trauma center arrived in scrubs, having come straight from surgery. “Tommy Morrison saved more lives at accident scenes than most EMTs see in a career,” he told the growing crowd. “He had a gift for keeping people calm, for making them believe they’d survive even when – especially when – the odds were against them.”
One by one, people shared stories. The mother whose premature baby Tommy had kept breathing during a desperate ambulance ride. The construction worker who’d lost his leg but not his life because Tommy knew exactly how to apply a tourniquet. The teenage girl who’d overdosed at a party and lived because Tommy refused to give up CPR even when others said it was too late.
“He wasn’t just a biker,” said Mrs. Chen, an elderly woman Tommy had visited weekly after meeting her at an accident scene. “He was an angel who happened to ride a motorcycle.”
By mid-afternoon, someone had erected a proper memorial at the curve – Tommy’s photo surrounded by flowers, candles, and messages. The hateful sign still stood, but it was dwarfed now by testimonies of love and respect.
That’s when Howard Brennan arrived.
Brennan owned the property adjacent to the curve. Sixtyish, wearing pressed khakis and a scowl, he pushed through the crowd toward the sign.
“This is my fence,” he announced. “And I have every right to post what I want on it.”
The crowd fell silent. So it was him.
“You wrote this?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Damn right I did. You bikers race through here at all hours, making noise, disturbing decent people. I’ve been complaining for years.”
“My son died here,” I said quietly.
“And maybe that’ll teach the rest of you to slow down,” Brennan shot back. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
The crowd tensed, but I held up my hand. Violence wouldn’t honor Tommy’s memory.
“Mr. Brennan,” I said, “my son was going exactly the speed limit when he died. We have the accident reconstruction to prove it. He died because the county won’t fix a drainage problem that turns this curve into a skating rink when it rains.”
“Sure, blame everyone but—”
“His name was Tommy,” I interrupted. “He was engaged to a kindergarten teacher named Lisa. He volunteered at the animal shelter on weekends. Last Christmas, he organized a toy drive that gave presents to two hundred kids. He was working a double shift the night he died because another EMT’s wife was having a baby.”
Brennan’s scowl wavered slightly.
“The noise you complain about?” I continued. “Half the time it was probably Tommy and his team racing to save someone’s life. Maybe even yours someday.”
“I don’t need—”
He was cut off by a woman pushing through the crowd, tears streaming down her face. “Mr. Brennan? You’re Howard Brennan from Pine Street?”
He nodded warily.
“Your grandson Bobby. Three years ago, bad motorcycle accident on Route 47. Do you remember the EMT who stayed with him? Who held his hand and kept him conscious until the helicopter arrived? Who visited him in the hospital afterward?”
The color drained from Brennan’s face as understanding dawned.
The woman turned to me. “That was Tommy, wasn’t it? I recognize him from the photo. Bobby’s mom showed me pictures of the EMT who saved her son. Said he was a biker himself, knew exactly how to handle motorcycle trauma.”
Brennan stared at the memorial, then at his sign, then back at Tommy’s photo. His grandson was alive because of the man whose death he’d celebrated.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“Because you didn’t want to know,” Father Patrick said gently but firmly. “You saw leather and motorcycles and made assumptions. Never bothered to see the human beings underneath.”
Brennan stood frozen, the weight of his actions settling on his shoulders. Finally, he walked to his sign, pulled it from the ground, and broke it over his knee.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m so damn sorry.”
I wanted to rage at him, to make him feel even a fraction of my pain. But Tommy wouldn’t have wanted that. Tommy always said the best response to hate was aggressive kindness.
“Help us fix the curve,” I said instead. “You’re a property owner here. The county might listen if you join our petition.”
Brennan nodded rapidly. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do whatever… I’ll call my lawyer, the commissioners. Whatever it takes.”
Over the following weeks, the story went viral. The image of bikers standing peacefully beside that hateful sign, sharing stories of Tommy’s compassion, struck a chord. Donations poured in for a memorial fund. The county, facing intense public pressure and threatened lawsuits, finally allocated money to fix the drainage at Miller’s Curve.
Brennan became an unlikely ally, using his connections to push the project through. He attended Tommy’s safety courses posthumously renamed in my son’s honor, learning about motorcycle awareness from the people he’d once dismissed as menaces.
The day they completed the drainage repair, hundreds of riders gathered at Miller’s Curve. We held a moment of silence, then rode the curve safely, no standing water to steal our wheels, no hazard to claim more lives.
Brennan was there, holding a new sign: “In Memory of Tommy Morrison, EMT, Biker, Hero. This curve made safe through his sacrifice.”
“I can’t undo what I wrote,” he told me. “But I can spend the rest of my life making sure everyone knows who your son really was.”
Lisa, Tommy’s fiancée, stood beside me as we watched the riders pass safely through the curve that had stolen him from us. She still wore her engagement ring.
“He would have forgiven Brennan immediately,” she said. “Probably would have invited him to go riding, tried to change his mind with kindness instead of anger.”
“That was Tommy,” I agreed. “Always saw the best in people, even when they couldn’t see it themselves.”
The memorial at Miller’s Curve became a pilgrimage site for riders, not just to honor Tommy but to remember that we’re more than our machines. We’re fathers and daughters, teachers and doctors, heroes and humans. Every stereotype, every hateful sign, every cruel assumption falls apart when people take the time to see us for who we really are.
And sometimes, it takes a tragedy to open eyes that were determined to stay closed.
A year later, at the annual memorial ride, Howard Brennan showed up on a Honda Rebel 300, wearing brand new gear and a nervous smile. He’d learned to ride, he said, to understand the people he’d hated for so long.
“I’m seventy years old,” he told me. “Probably too old to start riding. But I needed to know what it felt like, needed to understand what draws people to this.”
As we rode together through Miller’s Curve – now properly drained and safe – I watched him experience what we all know: the freedom, the focus, the feeling of being truly alive that comes with two wheels on open road.
“I get it now,” he said at the next stop, his eyes bright with discovery. “It’s not about being a menace or making noise. It’s about… living. Really living.”
Tommy would have loved that moment – seeing understanding replace hate, watching an enemy become a brother. That’s the thing about us bikers: we’re always ready to welcome someone new to the ride, even someone who once celebrated our deaths.
Because in the end, the road doesn’t care about your prejudices. It only cares that you respect it, respect each other, and remember that every rider passing through that curve is someone’s child, someone’s hero, someone who deserves to make it home alive.
The sign at Miller’s Curve is gone, but its lesson remains: Don’t judge what you don’t understand. And if you must judge, at least have the courage to learn who you’re condemning. You might discover that the menace you feared was actually the hero you needed.
Every time I ride through that curve now, I think of Tommy. Not of his death, but of his life. Of all the lives he saved and all the hearts he touched. And I think of Howard Brennan, the man who learned too late that hate is just fear of what we don’t understand, riding his little Honda through curves that no longer flood, finally seeing bikers as human beings.
It’s not the justice I wanted. I wanted my son back. But it’s the justice Tommy would have chosen – understanding over anger, connection over division, and a safer road for everyone who comes after.
That’s his real memorial. Not a sign or a plague, but a curve that no longer kills and a community that learned to see past leather to the hearts underneath.
And somewhere, I believe, Tommy’s riding still – through clouds instead of curves, teaching angels about countersteering, making sure everyone gets home safe.
