By Lulu

Carole King sang “My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue. An everchanging vision of the ever-changing view.” My tapestry is woven with threads of the people who enter my life. The color of the threads each person adds to the tapestry is determined by what they bring into my life. White is pure love. Green jealousy. Red anger. Blue sadness. Purple passion. Black evil, pain. Grey indifference. Pink fun. Yellow cheerfulness and sunshine. The longevity of knowing someone and the closeness you experience with them determines how much color they add to your tapestry.

Sometimes the person may add a great deal of color and yet their actual time in your presence can be quite short. I met a man a few months after Bull died. I was struggling to keep Thunder Roads Florida going after his death by suicide. Struggling with the work of a magazine that I suddenly owned due to his death, I was also struggling to be in the world of motorcycling without him. I walked into The Dog Pound in Bunnell to deliver the latest issue and several men I didn’t know were standing there. Billy Neal who I later would know as Bilkey said to me, “Girl you have the saddest eyes I have ever seen.” I burst into tears. He was so concerned about me he insisted I have breakfast with him the next day. And I did. After the tragic loss of a loved one you start to think you don’t want to burden your friends and family with your feelings, so a fresh caring listener was a blessing that morning. Bilkey added lots of sunshine and cheer to my tapestry that day. I only saw Bilkey one other time, when he came to the White Eagle during Bike Week several years later, but he called often to check on me and nicknamed me “Earth Angel”. He would send me shirts from different Harley dealers when he traveled. Our two encounters lasted no longer than a few hours combined…yet his checking on me as I recovered from the depth of sorrow added much to my tapestry.

I received a text in messenger late the other night, the name on my cell was Billy Neal. At first, I thought someone had hacked Bilkey’s Facebook because it said, “Is this Beth?” Then there was a message saying it was Bilkey’s daughter and she was relaying that Bilkey had died. Suddenly a rush of blue was added to my tapestry. I was so sad that he was gone, sad that I hadn’t spent more time with him, that I hadn’t told him how much happiness he had added to my life by caring about me when I needed someone. I was sad for his children too. I never asked Bilkey why he called me “Earth Angel”. Now I will never know, but I had a feeling as I cried for him while driving home, that he was comforting me as before and that now I will have an angel looking after me from above.

Many in Florida know Billy Neal. He was a bike builder from Ohio, but he visited Florida often and had friends throughout. He was bigger than life. Funny. Intuitive. Kind…I will miss him.

Tell someone how much they mean to you, be kind to a stranger that seems burdened and don’t forget your sunscreen…