HARLEY-DAVIDSON AND SEPTEMBER 11th

Twenty-five years ago on September 11th I was working at Harley-Davidson in the company’s historic headquarters building at 3700 W. Juneau Ave. in Milwaukee.

It was a little before 8 a.m. Central Time — We started our days early in those days — when someone from the H.O.G. group across the hall came into our office and told us to turn on the television.

We did.

And we couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

A jet had crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. I called home to tell my wife to turn on the TV and turned to my staff.

We watched in stunned silence as a second plane hit the South Tower.

Like millions of Americans, we were trying to make sense of something that seemed impossible.

HARLEY-DAVIDSON PRESIDENT CALLS A TEAM MEETING:

My memory isn’t great all these years later, but I recall Jim McCaslin, Harley-Davidson’s president and COO, called a meeting of company leadership. The question was simple:

What can we do?

The ideas started coming almost faster than we could write them down.

Donate a million dollars to help with the recovery.

Encourage Harley-Davidson dealers in the United States and around the world to sponsor rides and events to raise money.

Ask our employees to do the same.

And then I remember making a suggestion that, at the time, seemed pretty simple:

Maybe we could donate police motorcycles. Others agreed.

DONATE POLICE MOTORCYCLES:

We knew that dozens of police motorcycles and other first-responder vehicles had been destroyed when the Twin Towers collapsed. My thought was that Harley-Davidson could provide police motorcycles to New York so officers could use them to navigate the scene and the surrounding streets.

Jim liked the idea. He liked several of the ideas.

What I didn’t know at that moment was how quickly that simple suggestion would become a reality.

Harley-Davidson immediately donated $1 million to the American Red Cross, and the Harley Owner’s Group (H.O.G.) and our sales organization went to work with dealers around the world organizing rides and other fundraising efforts.

The motorcycle donation was a little more complicated.

Jon Syverson, who was in charge of police motorcycle sales and delivery, got on the phone. He started calling his contacts at police departments around the country, looking for motorcycles that could be redirected immediately.

He was able to divert 10 motorcycles that were either waiting for shipment or nearing completion.

These weren’t just regular Harley-Davidsons. They were police motorcycles, including Electra Glide Police, Road King Police and Dyna Defender Police models, equipped for law-enforcement use. Whelen Engineering also donated the emergency equipment for the bikes.

THE RIDE TO NEW YORK:

Then the idea became a ride.

As the sun was coming up on (I think) Friday, September 14, Harley riders, some Harley-Davidson employees and several law-enforcement officers headed east from Milwaukee on those 10 motorcycles.

We were sending them to New York.

The ride was almost 900 miles.

Syverson and Milwaukee County law enforcement helped coordinate the trip, contacting first responders along the route and letting them know that the group of 10 motorcycles was coming.

And something pretty remarkable happened.

The riders were met and escorted by police departments and first responders along the way.

It became much more than 10 motorcycles riding from Milwaukee to New York. Everywhere they went, law-enforcement officers seemed to understand exactly what the ride represented.

The country was still in shock. The highways and local roads were largely empty. There was very little traffic, and the group made its way east through a country that suddenly felt very different.

I wasn’t on that ride, but I remember following what was happening and hearing about the reception the riders received along the way. It was one of those moments when the Harley-Davidson community and the law-enforcement community came together in a very tangible way.

LOMBARDI’S HARLEY-DAVIDSON:

The group arrived at Lombardi’s Harley-Davidson on Sunday, September 16 I think.

Lombardi’s was on Bay Street in Staten Island near New York’s Upper Bay. Its T-shirts and other memorabilia featured the Twin Towers and the New York City skyline. It was a Harley-Davidson institution, selling motorcycles since 1905.

There was something especially poignant about bringing those motorcycles to New York at that particular moment and arriving at a dealership that was almost 100 years old at the time.

And then there was the trip home. How were the riders going to get home with airports shut down around the country?

The riders had to carpool back to Milwaukee.

They had ridden those motorcycles nearly 900 miles to New York because the bikes were needed there.

They weren’t riding them home.

Harley-Davidson also committed another 20 motorcycles to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for delivery as quickly as possible. Ultimately, the company dedicated 37 motorcycles to New York-area law-enforcement communities, including the NYPD, the Port Authority and the New York State Police.

LOOKING BACK: 

Looking back 25 years later, what I remember most isn’t a corporate initiative or a press release.

I remember being in that building on Juneau Avenue that morning.

I remember somebody telling us to turn on the TV.

I remember everyone standing there watching in disbelief.

And I remember sitting in that leadership meeting and saying, “Maybe we could donate motorcycles.”

I never imagined that a comment made in a meeting that morning would lead to police motorcycles being ridden nearly 900 miles from Milwaukee to New York just days later—and ultimately to 37 motorcycles being provided to New York-area law enforcement.

At Harley-Davidson, the answer to “What can we do?” became motorcycles, money, riders, employees, dealers and law-enforcement officers all pitching in.

That 900-mile ride from Milwaukee to New York was only one small piece of the enormous response to September 11. But it is a piece I will never forget.

Twenty-five years have passed, but I can still picture that television screen in the Harley-Davidson headquarters building and remember the pride and love for our country we all felt as those bikes headed east.

September 11, 2001, changed all of us.

I will never forget where I was that morning.