As most of you know I am a member of the Patriot Guard Riders.  Their membership has grown, in 3 months, to over 42,000 members.  For those that do not know what or why they were formed I will only say it is to give families of fallen soldiers some dignity at the funeral of their loved ones by shielding them from seeing the protester's signs and hearing all the nasty yelling.  This is the third PGR mission for Michigan, also the third time the protesters showed up and my first.  Bill Schwalm has been on all three.  You can go to http://www.patriotguard.org  and read a lot more about what we do and why.

  I don't even know where to start.  This was about the most emotional thing I can remember doing.

  Yesterday started with me posting on the PGR forum that anyone attending Corporal Nyle Yates funeral in Grand Ledge that wanted to ride as a group to meet me at the Alma Big Boy at 7:15AM today.  When I showed up at 7 AM there was already 2 bikes and 2 cages waiting.  Within a few minutes there were 9 more bikes with three of them being lady riders.  They decided that I should lead, everyone rode staggered & I was the only one with a CB.  So there were a lot of hand signals used but we did not have any problems.  When we got to the staging area there were already 30 bikes in the parking area.

   Within another half hour there was about 100 more bikes and we all lined up in 3 lines with the American flags flying on most of the bikes.  The police really work with us at every funeral and they escorted us to the Church where the funeral was to be held.  On the way over to the church we rode 3 abreast side by side.  Since we were riding slow it worked out good.  Also they told us NO revving the bike engines to make noise and everyone respected this rule.

   Oh, just a note about our "great" Meijer stores.  That is where we were suppose to line up at, but at the last minute they decided they did not want us setting up the ride on their property.  Too much controversy with the protesters.

   When we got to the church where the funeral was held, we parked 4 bikes to a parking spot all backed into place.  Out came all our flags along with a bunch more that were handed out.  We could see the area they had barricaded off for the protestors.  We were ALL told to keep our backs facing the protestors at all times no matter what.  If anyone turned around to face them or confront them they would be told to leave RIGHT NOW.  It was the PGRs between the church and the protesters.

   We no more then got setup and the protestors showed up in full force.  I have never heard such hateful, mean, nasty, foul mouthed yelling in my life.

   All of us held up our flags and said "God Bless Soldier Yates", sang "God Bless America" and other nice things. The protesters were very loud but we were 10 times louder. 

   Corporal Yates' mom, dad, brother, sister, and some more of his family came out and shook each of our hands and thanked each of us for being there to help deal with the protesters.  Their faces were filled with tears having to listen to the protesters yell things like "Mrs. Yates, your son is going to hell", "Yates was a fag", "Yates was shot in the back", "god bless that Yates is dead".  There were more and they were worse then I want to write.  We really did do a good job of drowning them out.

   After the funeral was part way through the protesters left, the police escorted them away so no one would follow them.  There was a large police presence at this funeral.

   When the protesters left, we all lined the street on both sides at arms length apart.  When the funeral was over the hearse, family and other cars passed us as each and every one of us held our flags at 45 degree angle as they drove through.  Corporal Yates' parents along with all the cars rolled there windows down as they drove by us and gave us thumbs up signs, mouthing "Thank You" and trying to smile during this very trying time for them.

   Words can not describe just how nasty these "protestor" people are, along with their nasty signs.  Bill Schwalm and I were talking while waiting for the funeral to drive by.  Bill said "could words ever describe the feelings you have right now and what we have just went through"?  The answer is there are no way words will be written to tell you all my feelings.

   I will tell you I will be there again in a second if needed for another funeral.  NO family should ever have to face what we saw and NO family should ever have to face this alone in their time of grief.

   If you get a chance check out the web site and you will see how GOOD American citizens are stepping up to the plate to help families in grief.

One of the PGR folks put together a fantastic slideshow of pictures, with music. You can find the slideshow here: Corporal Nyle Yates III 

 

Take Care My Friends,

Dennis