President's Message

What a challenging year we have had! We have a great group of people that are heavily involved in the club. First my other officers that help me run the club. Steve Hickle, VP, Sonja Karlowski Treasure and Darla Foster, Secretary. They are all great at what they do and this club is lucky to have such qualified and dedicated people to help run this club. Our board of directors have all stepped up and helped on a special project or just been at every event. Roger Bebierle Chairman of the board, Roger Ruth, Dale Behrns, Kevin Adcock, Marc Gifford, Brandon Hancock, Gary Foster, Ray Hoch and Herb Leeper. I have gotten to know all of them over the years and each brings special skills to this club that make them all very qualified to be board members of this great club.

The first big challenge that we had this year was getting the flat track up and running after many years of setting idle. Flat track racing had been the back bone of this club for many years and the club members voted to pay back some old debts by get this thing up and going again. The biggest obstacle was that the flat track needed 12 new light poles, 28 new lights and wiring on the whole track. We also needed a new retaining wall for the bleacher pad. The club really pulled together to get this project finished by our first scheduled race. It was also voted in to get our flat track races at Jeeps on the NFTRA (National Flat Track Racing Association) schedule. Steve Hickle and I spent many hours working out a deal with NFRTA. We had the track setup and ready to go the night of the first scheduled race and then the rain came and rained it out. I had this opening ceremonies speech all made out that I did not get to make because of the rain.

I would like to welcome Roger Atterbury and NFTRA to the Jeeps Motor Cycle Club.

I need to thank the following people for all their hard work in getting the flat track up and running again.

Mike Sullivan was in charge of electrical work and lights.
Jeff Turner of Ground Force did the retaining wall
Herb Leaper, North End Auto, hauled 60 big cement blocks.
Dave Stareck hauled all light poles which were donated by the Biggerstaff family.
Kevin Adcock put up the new wooden retaining fence.
Steve Hickle, Greg, Patty and Josh Gilman, Eric Norton, Roger, Tyler, Chris and Shelia Bieberle, Diane Walter, Dale Behrns, Erin Green, Ray Hock, Brandon Hancock, Shan Pettis, Paul and Brett Cook, Mark Friesen, Dan East, Darrin Allison and Theron Boswell.

A few weeks later challenge number two came along. NFTRA folded. Now what were we going to do? We had spent all this money, time and effort getting the flat track going again and we had no races to run on it. I was pressured hard by some club members to run the remaining race dates that we had scheduled on NFTRA’s schedule as Jeeps Club events. The current Jeeps crew that ran all the other races at Jeeps simply did not have the time to run another racing series. To make a long story short Randy Koster presented to the club at a club meeting a plan to hold flat track races at Jeeps. These races would be Jeeps Club events. In Randy’s plan that he presented to the club, he had himself, Tammy Heeb, Dan Heeb, Tom Carlisle and Ashley running the flat track races. Without these five dedicated people stepping up to run the flat track races, we probably would not have had any flat track races at Jeeps this year. They came through and did a great job running the three races at Jeeps that we did have.

On July 12th the club lost one of it’s most dedicated, devoted, active and valued club members we have ever had. Greg and Patty Gilman were the victims of a hit and run motorist, who ran their Harley into a guard rail on the I-135 & K-254 Interchange. Patty did not make it and Greg is still recovering. I lost a very dear friend, Greg lost a wife, Justin, Josh and Sarah lost a mom and mother in-law. Kaley lost a grandmother and the whole club lost a true example of what a real club member should be. Patty simply loved this club and it showed with all the effort she put into it. This was more of a tragedy than a challenge to the Jeeps Club but there were challenging things that came along with Patty’s passing. The club had agreed to hold the meal after Patty’s funeral for all friends and family to attend. It was the perfect place to gather knowing how much time Patty had spent in the last 10 year at the Club.

Tuesday July 22, 2008 challenge number three hit the club. Four days before this meal was to take place at Jeeps, the club was hit by what Meteorologists call a downburst. Strong winds toppled the announcer's stand, billboards, trees and light stands. It broke windows out in the club house, damaged the equipment shed, put the south scoring shack on its side and just made a mess of the place. The winds were so strong that it also toppled four semi trucks along I-135. Besides the wind and rain several inches of hail fell. I saw a drift of hail just north of Broadway and 101st street that was 18 inches deep. I had already scheduled a clean up day for Wednesday the 23rd so we could be ready for Patty’s funeral on Saturday. Because of the storm we had a lot more to clean up to get ready for this gathering. Thanks to all club members that came out to help clean the place up. The club really showed what it was made of. In the middle of dealing with Patty’s tragedy we were hit by this storm and still got the job done. The meal after Patty’s funeral on Saturday went off beautifully like nothing had happened four days earlier.

On top of all this, the club ran two very successful hare scrambles, three record breaking motocross races for bikes, two motocross races for ATVs, and seven supercross races for bikes and ATVs. One of the bike motocross races this year was an NMA qualifier as well as one of the ATV motocross races being a national qualifier. We averaged 297 entries for the three motocross races for bikes on the south track. Awesome!

The seven race Park City Supercross Series was challenge number four because of all the rain-outs. Aug 9th and Sept. 6th races were both rained out. We rescheduled them and then one of those races was rained out also. We were finally able to get them in with some creative scheduling. We ran a Saturday night Supercross then just 8 hours later we ran an ATV motocross. Our track prep crew really came through on that one. Thank you Roger Bieberle for helping me move bleachers and port-a-potties at 3:00 in the morning.

With all that this club has been through this year it is as strong as ever. When adversity hit this club the members pulled together and did what ever was needed to be done to get us though each challenge.

We will never forget Patty and how much she did for this club. I hope every club member that knew her would try to imitate her commitment and dedication to this club. If that were to happen this club would be even better than it is. Hopefully next year will be a little smoother.

Daryl Walter
President, Jeeps Motorcycle Club 12/12/2008