I’m going to again bring the posters for the 2003 RAT Raid in Steamboat, which those of you who attended the January meeting saw. They are big: 36x48, I think. And they were digitally printed, each costing me more than $40. The design was by my sons, Ben and Aaron. Most are in perfect condition, but some have suffered some slight damage over the . . . decade! They are free to all of you . . .
Some of you know Ben and Aaron from their occasional attendance at the EMRAT meetings. Some of you got to know Aaron much better as he rode the silver Thruxton (which they co-own) to Sturgis a couple of years ago.
Early Wednesday morning, my first wife and their mother, Frieda Pfahl, passed away . . . she was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in December. The twins have an older sister, Allison, who some of you have also met, once at Sturgis and once at a EMRAT meeting at the Walnut Room, with her husband, Mike. Mike and Allison are expecting a baby girl in March.
Frieda also was the step-mother to her husband Chalmer’s two children, Kate and Noah.
We met and were married 1967 and then separated in 1981. In 1969-1971, we served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa. There, our main transport was a step-through frame Honda 125. She endured 26 months in a region known as the “White Man’s Graveyard,” and nursed me through three severe bouts of malaria and hospitalization, one of which came close to killing me. She was brave, adventuresome and tough (she climbed to 18,760-feet on the south rim of Kilimanjaro).
In September 1981, we flew to London to pick up our new 1971 Triumph TR6R Tiger, and we then spent three months riding 6,000 miles around Europe.
Through our two and one-half years out of the country, Frieda, always optimistic and cheerful, never once complained about a thing (even while freezing in the cold, wind and snow of November and December in Europe on the back of the Triumph).
We had the Triumph air-freighted back to Kansas City, and I still have it. I rode it to my first RAT Raid in Steamboat in the summer of 2002.
After the Peace Corps, she became a registered nurse and worked for many years at Rose Hospital.
Frieda was a devoted mother to her three children and her two step-children. She saw two of her children get married: Ben and Aaron. And the birth of her first grandchild, Ben’s son, Paul, two years ago this month, was an indescribable joy to her. She was Paul’s Number One babysitter. She was a wonderful wife to her husband, Chalmers Turner. Finally, Frieda and Chalmers lived just several houses up the street from TK.
If you would like to send a message to Ben and Aaron, here are their e-mails:
Aaron Pilcher (aaron@aerobenn.com)
Ben Pilcher (benepilcher@gmail.com)
With great sadness,
Dan
0 comments:
Post a Comment