You may have noticed that I used to write for some of the magazines, back in the day. In the course of that pursuit I interviewed a woman whose husband ran a chopper shop in Killeen, Texas, in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Louis Schange was killed in a freak bike accident in ’72, and when I met his widow, Nelda, in 1994, she still had all the photo albums and memorabilia from those days. She had a 1934 VLD in the shed (!) which she’d just sold to an American living in South America. She also had plenty of tales to tell about jumping on the bike to go touring several states, or hopping aboard and riding to Ohio just to take part in a hill climb… She had all sorts of adventures like that.

As we leafed through the photo albums I said ‘These photos should be in a book, or a museum! There are several motorcycle museums that would love to have this stuff!’

Nelda shrugged and said ‘Oh, my children will probably just throw them out when I die.’
😳
That broke my heart. The only one of her kids who liked motorcycles died a young woman, and the others didn’t give a shit about her, her life, their own father…
😡
I tried to get her to let me take the albums and copy them, at least but she wouldn’t cut for that. She let me take some pics of the VLD, gave me two photos for the article, and gifted me a vintage dealership sticker her husband picked up in Hawaii. She would not budge on the rest.

I published my interview, and tried to keep tabs on her through the friend who introduced us, but she died before I could even make another run at her, and I heard from her brother-in-law, who I met many years later, that her prediction came true. All that history lost!

It still breaks my heart. 😢

A last note: take a moment to look at the photo above, and really think about what it represents. Twenty-two years after her husband died on a motorcycle, this woman – who looks like your average housewife – was still dedicated enough to his passion (and hers) to keep the VLD cleaned, properly lubricated, et cetera. She was dedicated enough to the love of her life to keep his memory alive, and retain all those souvenirs of their life on two wheels.

How many people would do that?

In Memory of Nelda and Louis Schange. RIP.