How I started riding — part 2

Posted by Nancy Guenther Chapman on September 4th, 2010 at 10:41 pm

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

I left out part of the story from being in the wait­ing room with Boodan and his brother. I men­tioned that we talked awhile, but I didn’t go into any detail. Boodan said it was OK to tell it.

While we were talk­ing, Boodan said, “I was study­ing to be a preacher once.”

I asked him what hap­pened. This was his response: “I was in a drug rehab cen­ter in Texas that was run by a church. Dur­ing that time I was saved and felt a call to preach and started tak­ing Bible classes. I stud­ied for awhile, but after I got involved with the inner work­ings of the church, I found out they were inter­ested in the same thing the club was inter­ested in — money and power. I decided to hang with the guys who were at least hon­est about it.”

I told him I knew some churches were like that, but I was really sorry it had been his expe­ri­ence. Who can defend that? I didn’t even try.

He later told me that while he was prepar­ing for min­istry, God had given him a “dream” to start a Chris­t­ian Motor­cy­cle Club. It was to be called the “Lord’s Heave.” This came from a King James trans­la­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment about a spe­cial offer­ing to God. The offer­ing was called the “Lord’s Heave,” or “Heave Offer­ing.” It was “lifted” up — thus the “heave.” The dream is yet to be ful­filled. Boodan has often asked me to start the club, but my answer is always, “It’s not my dream, but yours.

Maybe some­day, God will let you ful­fill your dream.”

Any­way, I ended the last part of the story men­tion­ing a tragic death in April of 2003 that brought us together again. It was Sun­day after­noon and Candy and I were dri­ving to Mel­bourne for a Vince Gill con­cert. I received a page from the ER about a death from a motor­cy­cle accident.

He came in as a John Doe, but we found out it was the son of one of our nurses, and she was unaware of his death. We went to the hos­pi­tal and spent the rest of the day with his fam­ily. We were told that he was rid­ing a motor­cy­cle because he had become a mem­ber of the War­locks Motorcycle Club.

The next day I went to their house and Boodan was there. Boodan had got­ten Keith into the club and con­sid­ered him a best friend. He was there to offer the con­do­lences and assis­tance of the club. He was obvi­ously griev­ing the death of a brother. We talked with the fam­ily and found that Keith would be cre­mated. I was asked to do the eulogy at the funeral, which would be held at a Catholic church.

After that meet­ing, Boodan told me they wanted a War­lock patch to be on Keith when he was cre­mated. I knew the own­ers of the funeral home and cre­ma­tory, so I told Boodan I would see that it was done. The next day, I met him at his apart­ment to pick up the patch. As he handed it to me, he said, “Please don’t let any­one else han­dle this.”

For those of you who have not hung around 1 per­cent motor­cy­cle clubs; there is a sacred­ness with which they view their patch. I told him that I under­stood. I said, “I have vest­ments that are con­sid­ered sacred, even though they’re made out of plain mate­r­ial. What they rep­re­sent and how they are seen is what makes them special.”

The owner had given me the time and place of the cre­ma­tion and I was able to go and per­son­ally place the patch on Keith right as he was going in. The effort I made to help and the respect I gave the patch formed an imme­di­ate bond with Boodan. At the funeral, I also gave the broth­ers the oppor­tu­nity to speak dur­ing the eulogy.

A cou­ple of weeks later, the club was hav­ing an auc­tion at the club­house to raise money for Keith’s fam­ily. Boodan invited me to come for that and a month later, invited me back for the “patch burn­ing.” This was where Keith would be hon­ored and his per­sonal vest and col­ors burned.

When the final rit­u­als were over, I assumed our rela­tion­ship would become dor­mant until our paths crossed again by some other tragedy. I was wrong. Boodan began call­ing me every now and then to meet for lunch.

Our friend­ship con­tin­ued to grow.

It grew to the place where I felt com­fort­able enough to ask him to use his truck to trans­port a ping pong table from Cocoa to Orlando for me. This was late Novem­ber and I bought one for Christ­mas, think­ing it would fit in my van. Wrong, again. Any­way, we drove to Orlando and I called Candy to let her know Boodan would be with me. The orig­i­nal inci­dent hap­pened in 1996 and Candy and I were mar­ried in 2000. This was 2003.

Candy fixed sup­per for us and as we were sit­ting at the table, Boodan inno­cently com­mented, “Padre, you need to come hang out at the strip club with me some.”

Candy quickly replied, “It’s bad for his heart.”

Boodan ques­tioned, “How is it bad for his heart?”

Candy quipped, “He might get a steak knife in it!!” Boodan loved that line and asked if he could use it sometime.

Our lunches con­tin­ued through Decem­ber and we even had din­ner together on New Year’s eve as Candy was busy work­ing the evening shift in the ER.

It would be Jan­u­ary 2nd that our friend­ship would be cemented through another acci­dent. Even­tu­ally I’ll get to how I started rid­ing, which was the premise of this story when it began. Who knew it would get this long?

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One response to “How I started riding — part 2”

1. CMcCoy810

   9 / 8 / 2010
   7:54 pm

   We wait with baited breath (what­ever that means?!)…

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