Many may confuse leather jackets, tattoos, piercings and motorcycles with some type of gang or motorcycle outlaw club, but local riding clubs are anything but.
The Central Texas Patriot Guard Riders is a national nonprofit organization established in Kansas as a result of protesters interrupting veterans funerals. The primary mission of the organization is to protect the families from disturbance and show respect at the funeral of any fallen veteran.
We are not a motorcycle club. We are patriots who honor our fallen veterans, said Mary Marebear Gregory, deputy state captain of the Patriot Guard.
We don t require you to sign up. Respect is the only requirement. The Patriot Guard is a riding club, which is a type of group open to the public. These groups usually involve a charity and community involvement. The Patriot Guard will not participate in a funeral unless personally invited by a family member or a funeral home.
The club usually request at least 36 hours of notice because their members are retired military, active military, spouses of retired or active military, police officers, paramedics, teachers, truck drivers, salesmen, business owners and others.
We run the gamut, Gregory said. We even have members of motorcycle clubs that can be a part. A motorcycle club is the more structured version of a riding group that follows a strict set of bylaws and protocol and doesn t allow everyone to be a member. Members of the Patriot Guard are not required to be veterans or even motorcycle riders. When requested to attend funerals, the Patriot Guard will team with other local riding clubs or groups to show solidarity to the veterans.
All different support agents come out, Gregory said.
The Wreath Riders are another nonprofit riding club associated with Wreaths for Vets, which places wreaths on every marker at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen. Lawrence Mack McCullar, the Wreath Rider president, says there are a lot of others (riding clubs) whose single focus is veteran support. The mission for the Wreath Riders is for no veteran to be buried alone and for all fallen veterans to have wreaths on their graves.
We offer veteran support year-round, regardless of who organizes it, McCullar said.
The Patriot Guard and the Wreath Riders were among riding clubs that gathered Wednesday for the funeral of unaccompanied veteran Dennis Louis Beggs at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery.
We ve attended a few (unaccompanied veteran funerals) in just this week, said Lew Stubs, the Wreath Rider group s vice president. Howard IndianJay Byerley, the ride captain for the Patriot Guard, said he joined the group because, as a soldier responsible for burials at Fort Hood, he saw too many veterans not being buried with dignity. The riding clubs primarily gather and ride for fallen veterans funerals, but they also join together and ride to various locations.
Sometimes we go up to State Park. Or sometimes east to Texarkana, Byerley said.
There are rider groups and associations similar to riding clubs that have different sets of requirements to join. They can be open to the public but are less lenient about who is a member.
There are tons and tons of stuff that goes along with riding bikes, Gregory said. You have to do your research. The members choose their road names, like IndianJay, as part of the culture. If a new rider doesn t have a nickname when he or she joins the club, members will take an incident or something they know and create a nickname.
The name IndianJay came from a 1948 Indian Run Byerley ran as a kid and it just stuck, Byerley said. We have a member we call Pops because he s an old guy that s been riding with us for a long time. Pacman is called that because it s his favorite game.
My name came from my sister when we were teenagers, Gregory said. She loved the Care Bears, my nickname was Mare, and so that s how I got my nickname.