Sean C. Morgan
The Northwest Veterans Motorcycle Club and its support club, the Northwest Patriots, escorted Jim Allyn home following his release from Samaritan Regional Medical Center after an operation that left him unable to walk alone.
Flanked by bikers, Allyn pulled up to his house where the motorcycle club had built a ramp Allyn can use to reach his front door.
Allyn had undergone surgery to repair vertebrae in his neck, he said. Doctors cut off spurs and put in spacers and a metal plate.
The surgery has temporarily required him to use a walker or wheelchair.
Duane Davis of the Veterans of Foreign Wars approached the Sweet Home chapter of the club about the project, and the club, which moved into Sweet Home in January, agreed. The ramp was necessary before Allyn could be released from the hospital.
The Northwest Veterans Motorcycle Club members are military veterans who share a common devotion for riding motorcycles and helping other military veterans through club-sponsored charitable events. Other chapters include Salem, Evergreen in the Portland-Vancouver area and LaGrande. The club’s membership is exclusively veterans of all branches of the service.
“I love it,” said Allyn, surrounded by club members, friends and members of the VFW and other veterans organizations, after arriving home Friday afternoon. “This is great. I was in an office, and somebody came in and said, there’s a bunch of people to see you.”
Club members surprised Allyn at the hospital when they went inside to get him and take him home.
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Allyn’s wife, RoseMarie Allyn. “It’s been hard to keep this a secret.”
Jim Allyn plans to be 100 percent quickly.
“I’m back up to the point I’m using the walker,” he said. He anticipates walking all the time within the next month.
Until then, he’ll use a wheelchair, as his doctor has instructed him, to keep from overdoing it, he said.