Biker Run Reveals Heart Beneath Leather and
Chrome
May 10, 1999
(page A 16)
PAINESVILLE, OH—His hands held high over his head, Michael Warren
jabbed at his thumb with a knife as bright and shiny as the phalanx of
motorcycles that surrounded him. Some people in the crowd winced and turned
away, but when they looked back again, Mr. Warren still had not managed
to tease out the drop of ritual blood.
“Get a sharper knife,” someone yelled, and the rest of the
crowd laughed. Finally, Mr. Warren leaned into the effort and brought
some blood to the surface. He held up his thumb for all to see and uttered
the same words he had said each first Sunday in May for the last 16 years:
“Let this be the only drop of blood shed on Ohio’s roads this
year.”
Then he bent down and ground his thumb into the dirt track of the Lake
County Fairgrounds.
Thus another “Louie Run” was officially declared. It was a
far cry from the original, in which Mr. Warren and 60 others gathered
to mourn the passing of Louie Ivcovic, the proprietor of a local bar.
This year, more than 5,000 bikers participated.
Unlike other bar owners in the county, Mr. Ivcovic had welcomed the bikers
and provided them with beer and a place to organize their deer-hunting
parties. His biker friends decided to mark the first anniversary of his
death by riding in a pack to his grave and then having a big party.
The following year saw more deaths within the biker community, so the
group added a few words on their behalf to the Louie Run. The event has
grown rapidly since then, and is now considered the kickoff to northern
Ohio’s motorcycle season.
In this year’s Louie Run, on May 2, the bikers rode in packs from
12 different sites for the all-day event, which also featured bands, bike
games, a tattoo contest, and the wedding of Dennis Slother and Gretchen
Bryan, who rode to the ceremony on matching blue Harley-Davidsons and
were married by a leather-clad minister. “They had 5,000 people
at their wedding,” Mr. Warren said. “Kings and queens couldn’t
do better than that.”
But the Louie Run is more than an occasion for bikers to air out their
black leather chaps and polish their chrome. The event is also a serious
fund-raiser for a number of causes that the bikers hold dear. Last year,
Louie Run Inc., a nonprofit charitable organization, gave away more than
$24,000.
The Lake County Society for the Rehabilitation of Children and Adults,
which provides therapy and socialization to about 6,000 clients, receives
the largest amounts. The bikers began making donations to the society
in honor of Mr. Ivcovic’s son, who is a client, and have given it
more than $50,000 over the years.
“They’re good friends,” Ann Dietrich, the society’s
executive director, said of the bikers. “At our annual dinner, we
usually have two or three tables of people from the Louie Run in their
black leather vests, sitting next to the businessmen and little old ladies
who support our program. There’s a long row of their bikes right
outside the window so they can keep an eye on them.”
Another recipient of Louis Run largesse is Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies
and Children’s Hospital. Each year, the hospital compiles a wish
list of toys and art supplies used to entertain patients and their siblings.
The Louie Run committee and hospital staff go shopping together, then
the bikers arrive in formation at the hospital to deliver the items, visit
the bedridden children, and place the ones who are well enough on their
bikes. “They arrive in their black leather outfits and the kids
just love it,” said Tammy DeMario, a former child life specialist
at the hospital.
This kind of teddy bear image is hardly what attracted these bikers to
the motorcycle subculture. Most members of the Louie Run committee are
burly, bearded men in their 40s who started riding in their teens, drawn
to all the mayhem the biker life implied. Now that they are hard-working
citizens, they hope the Louie Run will change the minds of those who still
see bikers as bad guys looking for trouble.
But they may not want to change minds too much. Committee member Roy Butzer’s
tattoos—a skull-faced snake coiling from a scar on his arm and a
massive Harley-mounted skeleton gloating on his back—are hardly
reassuring images.
“I still like it sometimes when I walk into a room and people move
out of the way,” Mr. Butzer admitted, braiding his long black beard,
then holding its ragged ends up to the light for inspection. “I
must say that I still do.”
Reprinted with permission from The New York Times
