People who ride motorcycles love riding the roads of the world to enjoy the winds against their faces and to see the beauty of the different scenes throughout the country. In an ABC News report an Ohio motorcycle rider’s family made elaborate funeral plans based on their father’s request for his burial. These plans have been in the making for 18-years.
Their father, Billy Standley, 82, of Mechanicsburg, Ohio funeral was held on Friday and approximately two-hundred people came out to view his body which was embalmed and sitting perfectly atop his 1967 Harley Davidson seat encased in a giant Plexiglas casket. The funeral was held outside so Standley’s bikers friends could attend.
Standley died of lung cancer on Sunday. He had started making his own funeral arrangements 18-years ago with David Vernon of Vernon Funeral Homes setting up all of the idiosyncratic ideas concerning what he actually wanted for the funeral.
Vernon said, “At the time I didn’t know whether to take him seriously or not;” but he became very familiar with Standley’s wishes through conversations over the years and Vernon realized this was an important affair for him.
Vernon said, “Standley had given a lot of thoughts to his funeral; and saying, “He was a unique man, a man who spoke his own mind and did them the way he wanted them whether other people liked it or not.”
Standley had done much planning for his funeral; he had bought three burial plots next to his wife’s grave, allowing enough space to accommodate the large custom made concrete vault to hold the casket. He and two sons had built a see-through Plexiglas box reinforced with steel and wood rods.
Pete Standley, a brother, told the ABC News, “They had built the casket five years ago and it has sit in Billy Standley’s garage until he died on Sunday.”
Upon Standley’s death on Sunday, five embalmers prepared and secured his body atop of his beloved bike, dressing him in his well-worn leathers, white helmet and glasses.
Standley was secured to the $30,000 bike by a metal armor he had fabricated to wrap around his waist and it was mounted to a bracket going down between the seats.
Standley’s beloved custom-painted 1967 Electra Glide cruiser had took him throughout the country before he had taken his final ride. He was a retired truck driver and a former rodeo rider who had travelled to every state except Hawaii during his younger years of his life; and many of them were made on his motorcycle.
Standley’s family indicated they knew the burial was unusual and it may shock some people who would witness it but they were granting the wish of their loved one who had expressed to them that he didn’t just want to ride to heaven, but he wanted the world to witness him doing it in his see-through casket.
His brother, Pete Standley, said, “This was his wish and we granted him his final wish; and he’s riding his motorcycle to the grave and he’s still riding it today.”
The writer of this article is Barbara Kasey Smith and it is based on an ABC News report.
Source:
ABC News report