By Bob Petrie • Sheboygan Press staff • September 12, 2009
At age 97, Catherine Westover has been around nearly as long as her favorite motorcycle, the Harley-Davidson.
So when the Sheboygan woman was given the opportunity to actually ride on a Harley, she was thrilled — and a touch nervous — to get the chance.
"I hung on for dear life," said Westover, a resident at Terrace Estates, who last Sunday went for her first motorcycle ride since she was a teenager, a trip on a 2006 Harley Trike to North Point Park to look out over Lake Michigan.
The ride came courtesy of a neighbor, Karen Even-Pantel, who owns the Harley and heard about Westover's love for the Harley brand.
"I can't believe she's 97," said Even-Pantel, who at age 67 got her own motorcycle license just seven years ago. "At that age, that's so cool. She's so on top of it."
Westover, who goes by the nickname, Kay, was a bit puzzled when she was placed on the motorcycle, helmet on head. Kay wanted to hold onto the driver during the ride, but was instead directed to use a pair of handles attached to the bike, "down by your butt."
"You don't hang onto the driver," she said. "I thought I'd feel safer. She (Even-Pantel) said, 'Pinch me if you're scared.' … No, I didn't pinch her."
The two, accompanied by a few other motorcycles, left Terrace Estates and headed east on Eisner Avenue — "it was plenty bumpy," Westover said — and they turned south onto Eighth Street and east on North Avenue, toward the lakefront.
When they stopped at the overlook, Westover was amazed at the view.
"The lake was beautiful that day," she said.
Westover, a 40-plus year resident of Sheboygan who drove a car up until last year, actually asked for a real Harley this past Christmas from her daughter-in-law, Dee Watson, who lives in Florida.
Instead, Kay received two red Harley toy replicas that make revving noises, which she keeps in her apartment. A grandson also mailed her a big blanket with the Harley logo.
A few months later, Even-Pantel said she was outside in her front yard, across from Terrace Estates, when Westover came by and said, "When can we go for a ride?"
"She was so excited," Even-Pantel said, and the arrangements were made.
Sunday's Harley ride was a lot different than the last time Westover was a passenger on a motorcycle. That happened way back when she was a teenager in Grand Haven, Mich., when a young man she called a friend gave her a lift home.
As Kay recalled, her father was none too thrilled to see his daughter on the back of a motorcycle, and at night.
"At 11 o'clock, he drove (us) up to the front door … and my father turned the porch light on and came out in his long underwear and said, 'Don't ever take my daughter on that contraption again!"
Roughly 80 years later, Kay's experience of riding a Harley was a whole lot more exciting.
"The best thing? The best thing was getting the ride."