This year the 2019 American Tribute Ride will travel in some areas we have visited on prior rides by the committee. The fire departments we are visiting are: Lamartine, Markesan, Neshkoro, New Chester, and Coloma. Kick stands up at 11:30 am on our way across the central part of the state on Saturday, July 27th from Lamartine. Lamartine, which is located southwest of Fond du Lac on USH-151 has agreed to be our starting point. Lamartine Fire Department has been talking with the Top Hats Motorcycle Club being involved with parking and assist with registrations. We will be graced with the presence of Travis Waas of the Grand Chute Police Department for the National Anthem.
We were informed by our dear friend, Mel Gullickson of Bancroft, that he has created two very nice Harley Davidson art pieces that we will be auctioning. Mel sells these at craft shows for $125.00.
We are trying a few new things this year. One is to have at least one vehicle transport veterans that are not able to be on a motorcycle through the route the day of the ATR. Secondly, the committee has created an “Adopt a Vet” program to give our veterans that are willing to attend the closing ceremony in Coloma with a meal. We are still working on the cost of the meal and will post in the next month’s newsletter. We hope many of our participants will donate towards this honorable tribute to those that have served our country.
As we solicited sponsors for the ATR, we were recently informed that Hupy and Abraham, SC will be a major sponsor of this year’s event. We continue to look for sponsors of the ride to help offset the cost of operations [i.e. porta-potties, food, printing, etc.]
Rennert’s Fire Equipment of Markesan and DeForest stepped forward to help promote our ride at the Wisconsin Firefighters Convention, for which our committee is very grateful.
We will have our registration forms on-line at www.americantributeride.com. Our donation request has remained the same with $25.00 for a single bike and $35.00 for a two-up cycle. We do allow 4-wheelers to also be involved. Shortly there will be a list of hotels that we were able to negotiate a reasonable price for rooms the day of the ride in the Coloma area.
Anyone interested in being on the committee can contact Ron Naab at rjnaab@frontier.com, 262/629-9749, or private message him on Facebook.
Our dear friend and supporter, Mel Gullickson, has created some beautiful wood art hangings we will auction.