Ride with me -- Flag Day/Pilger 2015

                               

One year ago today, two horrible tornadoes tore through the center of Pilger, Nebraska, effectively devastating the town. The people of the community, the state and even the nation, though, came together, and they kept the town from fading into history. The town is reviving itself bit by bit, and I'm happy to say that I got to do one small part for them when I rode in the escort of the American Legion National Commander, Mike Helm, when he went to Pilger on Sunday, June 14th, to dedicate the new city flag pole. They purposely chose Flag Day to do this honor since it was also so close to the one year anniversary of the tragedy.

Mike Helm is himself originally a small town Nebraska boy from Lebanon, Nebraska, so he can well understand the importance of growing up in a community like Pilger and the need to keep places like it going despite the whims of crazy Mother Nature.

 The first thing my particular group of Legion Riders, the Sandhills chapter of Post 172, did was to meet up with the local Legion commander of Pilger that morning and present him with a check for 1,000 dollars to use as he saw fit for their Legion or community. Here are photos of my group doing that. 

                              

In the above group photo, I'm the dorky one on the far left! About one-third of the members of my group attended this presentation, and it was our pleasure to help the Pilger American Legion Post.

After this presentation, we rode to Beemer to stand a flag line for the arrival of Mike Helm. We lined one side of main street and held our flags until his personal escort arrived with him following. He personally thanked each of us and gave us each a hat pin.

Then we listened to him and some other local dignitaries speak inside the Legion hall, had a light lunch, and got on our bikes to escort him into Pilger for the official flag pole dedication.

We made a pretty impressive scene traveling down highway 275 toward Pilger as our line of bikes stretched on seemingly forever. Once in Pilger, I counted all the bikes, and there were 93! Granted, not all of those were involved in the escort, but many of them were, so you can imagine what upwards of 70 bikes trailing down the highway must look like to those we met on the way.

In Pilger, Lieutenant Governor Mike Foley was also there, and he spoke first followed by three state senators, local American Legion representatives and then the National Commander himself. They all spoke to the resilience of the people of Pilger and to Pilger's new slogan of being "the town too tough to die." That's an apt slogan if I've ever heard one.

Here are photos of the Lieutenant Gov. and the National Commander speaking:

  

The day was very warm, so the local Boy Scouts were out in force handing out cold bottles of water. I must have looked really hot because I bet every boy stopped by me and asked if I needed some water. I did accept two of the bottles as the time wore on because I was sweating something fierce, so I was really grateful to them for being there. I wasn't sitting under the shade of the tent as my photos might appear. I was standing just to the side of it. 

After they all spoke, they raised the flag as pictured in my photos at the top. The base of the pole carries the marker that was provided by members of the American Legion family, of which the Legion Riders are a part. 

Here are some photos of the many bikes that roared into town earlier:

                          

  

                                                        Mine is the one on the far left. 

   





































                                                             
























                                                     

After the dedication, many riders left, but a few of us stayed to escort Mr. Helm into Norfolk where he was going to stay the night and speak at other events. When we arrived at the outskirts of Norfolk, we were met with a police escort. That was really cool! It was the first one I've ever been involved in personally. I was toward the front, so I had a great view of the synchronization of the police officers as each car pulled out and held up the traffic for us to simply continue riding straight through town to the other side without having to stop once.

After we led the National Commander to his hotel, he came around and thanked each of us personally again. I thought that was a very nice gesture on his part.

I'm glad I'm a member of the American Legion Riders where I can have the opportunity to do a small part for the betterment of the country. I wish Pilger nothing but the best as the town continues to rebuild.