Our Rival Club Showed Up at Our Brother’s Funeral. We Had Hated Them for 19 Years. Their President Took Off His Cut and Laid It on the Casket — And Then He Said 14 Words Nobody in the Church Will Ever Forget
Our rival club rode 31 bikes to our brother’s funeral. We had hated them for 19 years. Their president took off his cut and laid it on the casket. “On the road we were rivals. When a brother falls, every brother hurts.”
My name is Russell “Books” Aldenhauer.
I am fifty-nine years old. I work as a school district facilities supervisor at a small public school district in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have been a member of a small motorcycle club called the Bay Iron Riders MC for twenty-two years. I have been the chapter sergeant-at-arms for the last nine years.
I am writing this story with the explicit permission of my chapter president Mark “Padre” Kowalewski, the widow of the brother whose funeral this story is about, and the chapter president of the rival club involved in this story — a man named Frank “Bull” Schoenfeld of the Lakeshore Outlaws MC, who has read this story in draft and who has told me, “Books. Don’t soften my part. I made the choice. I will live with it.”
I will not soften it.
I want to tell you, before I begin, who the two clubs are.
The Bay Iron Riders MC is a small Green Bay-based motorcycle club founded in 1987. We have, at present, twenty-six patched members across two chapters — Green Bay (mine) and a smaller satellite chapter in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on the Door County peninsula. We are not a 1% club. We do not sell drugs. We are working men — five of us are tradesmen, three are truck drivers, two are nurses, one is a high school custodian, four are retirees from the paper mill industry that used to dominate the Fox River Valley, and a handful of others. We do an annual toy run for a local children’s shelter. We have raised $487,000 for various charities over thirty-eight years of club operation.
The Lakeshore Outlaws MC is a small Manitowoc-based motorcycle club founded in 1991. They have, at present, twenty-one patched members in their single Manitowoc chapter — about thirty-eight miles south of Green Bay along the Lake Michigan shoreline. They are also not a 1% club, despite the word Outlaws in their name, which they took from a Wisconsin folk reference, not from the larger more notorious club of similar name. They are also working men. They have a similar charity record. They have, by their own count, raised about $390,000 over thirty-four years.
The rivalry between our two chapters had begun in 2006.
It had begun for a stupid reason, which is the only kind of reason rivalries between small clubs ever begin for. There had been a misunderstanding at a regional charity ride in Sheboygan in the summer of 2006. A patch from one of our brothers had been damaged in what we believed had been a deliberate elbow shove from one of theirs. They had said it had been an accident. We had not believed them. There had been a shoving match in the parking lot of the staging area. Three days later, two of our brothers had been jumped behind a bar in Manitowoc by what we believed had been four of their brothers. Two of our brothers had been hospitalized — one with a broken nose, one with a concussion. Their chapter had denied involvement. The criminal investigation had not produced charges.
That had been the start.
Over the next nineteen years, the rivalry had not been violent at the Hells Angels-versus-Mongols level — we are both small chapters, and neither of us is in the business of starting wars. But there had been incidents. Three of our brothers had been to the hospital after altercations with theirs over the nineteen years. One of theirs had been to the hospital after an altercation with two of ours in 2011. There had been parking-lot shoving matches at three different events. There had been bad blood at every regional motorcycle event we had both attended. There had been seven different occasions in nineteen years when our chapters had crossed paths at gas stations, restaurants, or rallies, and the resulting tension had ended an event early.
In 2014, our chapter had buried a patched brother named Daniel “Hammer” Volk, who had died of an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty-one.
The Lakeshore Outlaws had not attended his funeral.
We had not, in 2014, expected them to. The rivalry was the rivalry.
In 2018, the Lakeshore Outlaws had buried a patched brother named Joseph “Joey Two” Brennan, who had died in a single-vehicle accident on I-43 outside Manitowoc. We had not attended his funeral either. They had not expected us to.
That had been the equilibrium.
Until the morning of November 14th, 2024, when our chapter buried Eldridge “Reverend” Halvorsen — our former chapter president, fifty years a patched member of the Bay Iron Riders, the man who had founded our chapter in 1987 — in a small Lutheran cemetery on the south side of Green Bay.
Reverend had been seventy-six years old. He had passed away peacefully in his sleep on November 9th, 2024. He had been retired from his civilian job — he had been a long-haul trucker for forty-one years — for ten years. He had stepped down as chapter president in 2017 and had handed the gavel to Padre Kowalewski. He had remained an active member of the chapter until his death, attending every monthly meeting and every charity run he was physically able to.
He had been the soul of our chapter for thirty-seven years.
His funeral had been planned for Tuesday November 14th, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. at Resurrection Lutheran Church on Velp Avenue in Green Bay.
Forty-six bikers from our chapter and our Sturgeon Bay satellite had been expected.
What none of us had expected — and what nobody in our chapter had any reason to expect — was that thirty-one bikers in Lakeshore Outlaws cuts would roll into the church parking lot in formation at 10:42 a.m. that Tuesday morning.
Want to know what their president did when he walked up to Reverend’s casket in the church and what he said to our chapter in the parking lot afterwards? Drop CUT in the comments — I’ll share more soon.
PHẦN 2 — THE INSIDE
I want to tell you about Eldridge “Reverend” Halvorsen.
He had been born in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on April 8th, 1948. His father had been a commercial fisherman on Lake Michigan. His mother had been a school cafeteria worker. He had attended Sturgeon Bay High School and graduated in 1966.
He had enlisted in the United States Army in the spring of 1967. He had served two tours in Vietnam between 1967 and 1969 as a combat medic with the 1st Cavalry Division. He had come home in October of 1969 with a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and a quiet dispensation toward men who needed help that he carried for the rest of his life.
He had married a woman named Sigrid Lundgren in 1971. They had been married for fifty-three years at the time of his death. They had three grown children — two daughters, one son — and seven grandchildren.
He had bought his first Harley — a 1968 Electra Glide — in 1970, with money saved from his post-discharge longshoreman job at the port of Green Bay. He had ridden Harleys continuously for the next fifty-four years.
He had founded the Bay Iron Riders Motorcycle Club in 1987. He had been the chapter president from 1987 to 2017 — thirty straight years. He had stepped down on his own terms at age sixty-nine, after grooming Padre to take over.
He had been called Reverend, in the way these nicknames work, because he was the brother in our chapter who, in thirty-seven years, had performed every meaningful ceremony our chapter had ever needed. He had spoken at every brother’s wedding. He had spoken at every brother’s child’s baptism. He had spoken at every brother’s funeral. He had not been an ordained anything. He had simply been the man who knew what to say.
He had also, in fifty-four years of riding, never been involved in a single physical altercation with another biker.
This is important.
He had not, in nineteen years of the Lakeshore Outlaws rivalry, ever been part of a single confrontation. He had not been in any of the parking-lot shoving matches. He had not thrown a single punch in any of the bar fights. He had not been one of the brothers in the 2011 incident. He had been, in the official record of nineteen years of our chapter’s hostility with the Lakeshore Outlaws, completely uninvolved.
He had also been the only man in our chapter who had, in nineteen years, ever publicly questioned whether the rivalry should continue.
He had, by my own personal recollection at our chapter meetings, raised the question at least four different times — in 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2021. He had said, each time, some version of the same thing.
He had said, “Brothers. We are working men. They are working men. Whatever happened in 2006 in Sheboygan is twenty years gone. Most of the brothers who were there have aged out of the chapter or died. The men we are fighting are not the men who started this. We are not the men our generation started this with. We are an inheritance, brothers. We are choosing to carry an inheritance that none of us was originally responsible for. I think — I am not telling you what to do — but I think someday somebody in our chapter is going to have to figure out how to set this down.”
The chapter had, every time he raised it, listened respectfully and not voted on anything.
The chapter had not been ready.
He had not pushed it.
He had simply, at age seventy-six, on the morning of November 9th, 2024, gone to bed in his small house on the south side of Green Bay with his wife Sigrid beside him, and he had not woken up.
The autopsy had ruled it a peaceful cardiac event in his sleep.
He had left, on his small wooden writing desk in the spare bedroom, a single sealed envelope.
The envelope had been addressed: To Mark Kowalewski. Open after my funeral. — Eldridge.
Padre had received the envelope on the evening of November 9th, when Sigrid had given it to him at the family’s home.
He had not opened it.
He had carried it, by his own account at our chapter meeting two weeks later, in the inside pocket of his cut for the next eleven days, between November 9th and November 20th — the day of the funeral was November 14th, and the chapter meeting at which he finally opened the letter was November 20th, six days after the funeral.
He had not, in those eleven days, told a single member of our chapter that the letter existed.
He had wanted, by his own account, to read the letter alone first. He had wanted to be sure, before he shared the contents with the chapter, that the contents were what he hoped they were.
He had been right.
The contents were exactly what he had hoped they were.
I will get to what was in the letter.
What I want to tell you about now is what happened on the morning of November 14th, 2024, in the parking lot of Resurrection Lutheran Church.
PHẦN 3 — THE CRISIS
I had arrived at the church at 9:47 a.m.
I was on duty as the chapter sergeant-at-arms — meaning I was responsible for parking organization, security, and crowd control. We had expected forty-six bikes. I had, with my counterpart from the Sturgeon Bay satellite chapter, mapped out the parking lot in advance.
The first bikes had begun to arrive at about 10:00 a.m.
By 10:30 a.m., we had twenty-three bikes in the lot.
By 10:40 a.m., we had thirty-eight.
The hearse had been scheduled to arrive at 10:50 a.m. Reverend’s family had been scheduled to arrive at 10:45 a.m.
At 10:42 a.m., I heard the rumble of a large group of motorcycles approaching the church from the south on Velp Avenue.
I had not, at that moment, realized who it was.
I had thought, very briefly, that it was perhaps a delegation from one of our affiliate chapters — we had expected possibly six to eight bikes from a sister chapter in Appleton.
Then the lead bike pulled into the parking lot.
The lead bike was a Harley-Davidson Road Glide. It was being ridden by a six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-sixty-pound man with a shaved head and a long fully white beard. He was wearing a black leather cut.
The cut had a Lakeshore Outlaws MC top rocker.
The cut had a Manitowoc WI bottom rocker.
The cut had a President center patch.
Behind him, in formation, were thirty more Lakeshore Outlaws bikes.
I will tell you the absolute truth.
For the first six seconds — I counted them, later, when I was thinking about it — I thought we were about to have an incident at our former president’s funeral.
I thought thirty-one of our rivals had ridden up to disrupt our brother’s burial.
I thought I was going to have to call the police, on the morning of Reverend Halvorsen’s funeral, in front of his widow and his children and his grandchildren.
I had reached, by reflex, for the cell phone in the inside pocket of my own cut.
The lead Lakeshore Outlaws rider — Frank “Bull” Schoenfeld, who I knew of by reputation but had never met — pulled up to the edge of our parking row, about forty feet from where I was standing.
He killed his engine.
He got off his bike. Slowly. The slow, deliberate movement of a man who knew that thirty-eight Bay Iron Riders had just turned to look at him.
He raised his hands. Both of them. Open. Palms out. The universal I am not here for trouble gesture.
He walked, alone, twenty feet across the asphalt toward me.
He stopped about ten feet away.
He said, in a voice that carried easily across the cold parking lot, “Brother. I’m Bull Schoenfeld. President, Lakeshore Outlaws, Manitowoc chapter. I’d like to speak with your chapter president, please. With his permission. We do not want to interrupt your service. We are not here to start anything. We are here to pay our respects to Eldridge Halvorsen.”
I had not, in nineteen years, ever heard a Lakeshore Outlaws brother speak respectfully about any member of our chapter.
I had been completely unprepared.
I said, “Bull. Hold your bikes where they are. Don’t dismount any further. I’ll get him.”
I walked across the parking lot to where Padre was standing near the church entrance, talking quietly with Sigrid Halvorsen and her three grown children.
I said, “Padre. I need you. Now.”
He looked at my face. He excused himself from the family. He walked with me to the edge of the parking lot.
He saw the thirty-one Lakeshore Outlaws bikes.
He saw Bull Schoenfeld standing alone twenty feet from his bike with his hands still raised.
He did not, for about five seconds, say anything.
Then he said, in a very quiet voice, “Books. What are they doing here.”
I said, “He says they’re here to pay respects.”
Padre said, “Books. I don’t know what to do with that.”
I said, “Brother. He’s standing twenty feet from his bike with his hands up. He has thirty-one of his patched men sitting on their bikes behind him. Whatever else this is, it is not an attack. He could have rolled in hot. He didn’t. He is asking permission.”
Padre said, “Books. I am going to walk over there and talk to him. I want you ten feet behind me. I want every one of our brothers to stay where they are. Nobody moves. Nobody draws. Nobody escalates. Whatever this is, we are going to find out what it is. We are not going to ruin Reverend’s funeral with a parking-lot fight.”
I said, “Yes, brother.”
Padre walked across the asphalt to where Bull Schoenfeld was standing.
I followed ten feet behind him.
Padre stopped about six feet from Bull.
He did not extend his hand.
He said, “Bull. Mark Kowalewski. President, Bay Iron Riders. Speak.”
Bull said, “Mark. First. I want to apologize for arriving without prior notice. I should have called your chapter. I considered it. I decided that if I called, you would have had to take it to your chapter, and your chapter would have had to vote, and the vote might have gone either way. I made the decision, on behalf of my own chapter only, that we would arrive without warning, with our hands up, and ask permission at the gate. If you tell us to leave, we will leave. We will not make a scene. We will not park. We will not dismount further. We will turn around and ride home and you will not see us at any of your future events. I am giving you the choice.”
Padre said, “Bull. Why are you here.”
Bull said, “Mark. Eldridge Halvorsen reached out to me eleven months ago.”
Padre’s face did not move.
He said, “Bull. Repeat that.”
Bull said, “Mark. In December of 2023 — eleven months ago — Eldridge Halvorsen sent a handwritten letter to my chapter, addressed to me as president. The letter was brought to our clubhouse by a courier. I read it on the evening of December 14th, 2023. I have it in my saddlebag right now if you would like to see it.”
Padre said, “Bull. I would like to see it.”
Bull walked, slowly, to his Road Glide.
He opened the saddlebag.
He pulled out a single folded white envelope.
He walked back to where Padre was standing.
He handed it over.
Padre opened it.
He read it.
He stood there, on the asphalt of the Resurrection Lutheran Church parking lot, on the morning of his founder’s funeral, holding a letter in his hand, for about ninety seconds.
Then he turned to me.
He said, “Books. Read this.”
He handed me the letter.
I read it.
I am going to give you the contents of the letter — because Reverend’s family has, eleven months later, given me permission to share it. I am going to summarize rather than quote it directly because Sigrid Halvorsen has asked me not to publish her late husband’s exact words. I am paraphrasing carefully.
The letter said, in summary:
Dear Frank Schoenfeld,
My name is Eldridge Halvorsen. I am the founder and former president of the Bay Iron Riders Motorcycle Club in Green Bay. I am seventy-five years old. I am writing this letter because I have been carrying something for nineteen years that I do not want to die carrying.
Our two chapters have been in a low-grade rivalry since the summer of 2006. The original cause is now twenty years past. I have, in my own chapter, attempted four different times to raise the question of whether the rivalry should be ended. My chapter has not been ready. I have not pushed.
I am writing to you, privately, because I want you to know — before I die — that there is at least one man in the Bay Iron Riders MC who does not consider the Lakeshore Outlaws his enemy. There is at least one man who has watched the last nineteen years and seen working men on both sides who deserve better than what we have been giving each other.
I am also writing because I want to ask you for one specific thing.
When I die — and at seventy-five with the heart condition my cardiologist has been telling me about for the last two years, that day is coming — I would consider it a personal kindness if some delegation from your chapter would come to my funeral. I am not asking for the entire Lakeshore Outlaws chapter to attend. I am not asking for a parade. I am asking you to do whatever you feel comfortable with, on whatever scale you feel comfortable with.
I am asking because I think the only way the rivalry between our two chapters ends is if one of us — me, in this case, on the way out the door — gives the other an opening.
I am giving you the opening.
If you choose to take it, please present this letter to Mark Kowalewski, who will be my chapter president at the time of my funeral. He will not have known about this letter until you arrive. I have not told him. I do not want him to know until the day. I do not want him to feel that my last request put him in a position. I want the choice to be his and his chapter’s, freely, on the day.
I have not told my wife or my children about this letter either. I do not want any version of this to feel staged.
If you do not feel comfortable attending, please burn this letter and never mention it. There will be no second request. I am only asking once.
Either way, please accept my personal apology — on behalf of myself only, not on behalf of my chapter — for any actions of any of my brothers over the last nineteen years that have caused harm to any of yours.
Brothers in the road, even when not in colors,
Eldridge Halvorsen
Bay Iron Riders MC
I had read the letter standing on the asphalt of the parking lot of Resurrection Lutheran Church on the morning of Reverend’s funeral.
I had handed it back to Padre.
I had said, very quietly, “Brother. Reverend wrote this in December of 2023.”
Padre had said, “Books. He did.”
I had said, “Brother. He didn’t tell us.”
Padre had said, “Books. He didn’t.”
I had said, “Brother. What do we do.”
Padre had stood there for a long time.
Then he had turned to Bull Schoenfeld.
He had said, “Bull. Bring your brothers in. Park along the south wall of the lot. Do not approach the family. Do not enter the church until our service has begun and we have seated the family. Sit in the back rows on the left side. After the service, ride in formation behind us to the cemetery. Stand at the back of the graveside service. After the burial, when the family has left the gravesite, you may approach the casket area to pay your respects. We will not interfere.”
Bull had said, “Mark. Thank you.”
Padre had said, “Bull. He asked. We are honoring his request. This is not a peace summit. This is one man’s last request. After today, we will take this back to our chapter and decide what comes next.”
Bull had said, “Mark. Understood. Whatever your chapter decides, we will honor it.”
Padre had said, “Bull. One thing.”
Bull had said, “Yes.”
Padre had said, “Bull. You will speak in the parking lot, after the cemetery, before you ride home. To the family. To my chapter. To whoever wants to hear it. You will tell them why you came. I do not want a single brother in my chapter to leave today not knowing why thirty-one Lakeshore Outlaws were at our founder’s funeral. You owe us that. Not me. Reverend.”
Bull had said, “Mark. I will.”
He had walked back to his bike.
He had signaled his thirty brothers to dismount and walk in.
They had parked in formation along the south wall.
They had filed into the back rows of Resurrection Lutheran Church on the left side, in their cuts, with their helmets in their hands.
The service had begun at 11:14 a.m. — fourteen minutes late.
PHẦN 4 — THE TWIST
I want to tell you what happened in the parking lot at 1:47 p.m., after the burial.
Reverend’s family had finished the graveside service. Sigrid had hugged about sixty different people. The grandchildren had each placed a single white rose on the casket before the lowering. The family had departed for the small reception at the church fellowship hall.
The brothers — both chapters, sixty-eight patched bikers total — had remained at the cemetery.
We had ridden, in two long formations side by side along the cemetery’s main road, back to the church parking lot.
Bull Schoenfeld had pulled his Road Glide into the center of the parking lot.
He had killed his engine.
He had gotten off his bike.
He had walked to the center of the lot.
He had stood in front of sixty-eight patched bikers — twenty-six Bay Iron Riders from our combined Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay chapters, eleven affiliated brothers from other Wisconsin chapters who had come for Reverend, and thirty-one Lakeshore Outlaws.
He had taken off his cut.
He had folded it carefully.
He had walked to where the hearse had stood ninety minutes earlier — the casket, of course, was no longer there; it had been transported to the cemetery — and he had laid his folded cut on the asphalt where the casket had been.
He had stood up.
He had said, in a clear voice that carried across the parking lot, the fourteen words that became — among the brothers in both chapters and in the broader Wisconsin motorcycle community — the line that ended a nineteen-year rivalry:
“On the road, we were rivals. When a brother falls, every brother hurts.”
He had paused.
He had said, “Brothers of the Bay Iron Riders. My chapter and yours have been at odds for nineteen years. We are not going to fix that today. Today is not for that. Today is for Eldridge Halvorsen, who reached across nineteen years of bad blood to ask one favor of a man who used to be his enemy. He asked me to come. I came. I brought my chapter because every man behind me wanted to come once they read the letter.”
He had paused.
He had said, “Brothers. I want to say one more thing. To the family of Eldridge Halvorsen, if any of them are listening from the fellowship hall. Your husband, your father, your grandfather — was the kind of man who, at age seventy-five, with a heart condition his cardiologist was warning him about, decided to spend one of his last clear-headed afternoons writing a letter to the president of a rival club he had never met, asking for a kindness that could not benefit him because he was not going to be alive to see it. He wrote that letter for the brothers he was leaving behind. On both sides.”
He had paused.
He had said, “Brothers. He set it down. We picked it up. What happens next is up to all of us. Today we are here because of him. Tomorrow is for the rest of us to figure out.”
He had walked over to his folded cut on the asphalt.
He had picked it up.
He had put it back on.
He had walked back to his Road Glide.
The Lakeshore Outlaws had mounted their bikes.
They had ridden out of the parking lot in formation at 2:14 p.m.
They had not stopped at the fellowship hall.
They had not asked for a single thing.
They had simply gone home.
PHẦN 5 — REVELATION
Six days later, on the evening of November 20th, 2024, our chapter held its monthly meeting at the clubhouse.
Padre had brought the unopened envelope that Sigrid had given him on November 9th — the letter Reverend had left for him.
He had opened it in front of the chapter.
He had read it aloud.
The letter had been short.
It had said, in summary — and I am paraphrasing carefully because Sigrid has not given me permission to quote it directly:
Mark,
If you are reading this after my funeral, then a few things have happened that you did not know about. I want you to read the letter I wrote to Frank Schoenfeld in December of 2023, which Frank should have brought to you on the day of my funeral. If Frank did not bring the letter — if he chose not to attend, or chose to attend without delivering it — that is his decision and I do not hold it against him. He had eleven months to decide.
If Frank did bring the letter, then you know what I asked him for. I asked him for an opening. I gave him a chance to give the Lakeshore Outlaws an exit from the rivalry, on his terms, by attending my funeral.
I am writing this second letter to you because I want you to know that whatever Frank chose to do, I do not want the chapter to take any position based on my last wishes. I am dead. I do not get a vote anymore. Whatever you and the brothers do with the rivalry from here is yours to decide, freely, without my interference.
I do, however, want you to know one thing.
The chapter I founded in 1987 was not founded to carry a fight none of us started. The chapter I founded was founded so that working men in Green Bay would have a place to ride together, to take care of each other, and to take care of the kids in our community. That was the entire point. That has been the entire point for thirty-seven years.
If the chapter decides, on its own, freely, without my dead voice in the room, that ending the rivalry would let us focus on the original purpose — that is what I would have wanted. But I will not push from the grave.
I love you all. Take care of Sigrid. Tell my grandchildren their grandfather loved them.
Eldridge
Founder, Bay Iron Riders MC, 1987 — 2024
Padre had finished reading the letter.
He had folded it carefully.
He had put it back in the envelope.
He had set the envelope on the table.
He had said, “Brothers. Reverend has given us his last position. He has also explicitly told us not to take it as instruction. The decision is ours.”
We had voted that night.
The vote had been twenty-six in favor of ending the rivalry, zero against, no abstentions.
Padre had called Bull Schoenfeld the next morning.
The Lakeshore Outlaws had voted on their end three days later.
Twenty-one in favor, zero against, no abstentions.
The rivalry had been formally ended on December 1st, 2024.
There had been no ceremony.
There had been a single phone call between the two presidents.
That had been enough.
PHẦN 6 — ECHO
In the year since the rivalry ended, the two chapters have done three joint charity rides.
The first was in May of 2025 — a 134-mile run along the Lake Michigan shoreline from Manitowoc to Sturgeon Bay and back, raising money for a children’s hospital in Green Bay.
The second was in August of 2025 — a memorial ride for Reverend, organized jointly by both chapters, ending at his grave at the small Lutheran cemetery on the south side of Green Bay.
The third was in October of 2025 — a toy run for a women’s shelter in Manitowoc.
The total raised across the three rides was $94,000.
Reverend would have liked that.
PHẦN 7 — ENDING
Eldridge Halvorsen is buried under a simple flat granite marker at a small Lutheran cemetery on the south side of Green Bay.
The marker reads: Eldridge Halvorsen — April 8, 1948 — November 9, 2024 — Husband. Father. Grandfather. Brother.
It does not say Founder. It does not say President. It does not list his Bronze Star or his Purple Hearts. He had asked, in his will, for a simple marker.
Sigrid visits every Sunday.
Padre visits every first Sunday of the month.
Bull Schoenfeld has visited twice — once in March of 2025 and once in August. Both times he came alone. Both times he stood at the foot of the marker for about ten minutes. Both times he laid a single black-and-red carnation — the colors of the Lakeshore Outlaws — on the grave.
Both times he left without speaking.
Reverend would have understood.
If this story moved you — follow the page. There are more men out there who wrote letters in December of one year and were buried by November of the next. More chapter presidents who carried envelopes in the inside pockets of their cuts for eleven days before opening them. More nineteen-year rivalries that ended because somebody asked, once, with his hands up, in a parking lot. There are more stories the world doesn’t see — and I will keep telling them as long as someone keeps reading.
TEASER VIRAL — VERSION 2
Our rival club rode 31 bikes to our brother’s funeral. We had hated them for 19 years. Their president took off his cut and laid it on the asphalt. “On the road, we were rivals. When a brother falls, every brother hurts.”
My name is Russell “Books” Aldenhauer.
I am fifty-nine years old. I work as a school district facilities supervisor at a small public school district in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have been a member of a small motorcycle club called the Bay Iron Riders MC for twenty-two years. I have been the chapter sergeant-at-arms for the last nine years.
The Bay Iron Riders MC is a small Green Bay-based motorcycle club founded in 1987. We have, at present, twenty-six patched members across two chapters. We are not a 1% club. We are working men. The Lakeshore Outlaws MC is a small Manitowoc-based motorcycle club founded in 1991. They are also not a 1% club, despite the word Outlaws in their name. They are also working men.
The rivalry between our two chapters had begun in the summer of 2006 at a regional charity ride in Sheboygan over a damaged patch and a parking-lot shoving match. Three days later, two of our brothers had been jumped behind a bar in Manitowoc. Two of our brothers had been hospitalized.
That had been the start.
Over the next nineteen years, three of our brothers had been to the hospital after altercations with theirs. There had been parking-lot shoving matches. There had been bad blood at every regional event we had both attended.
In 2014, our chapter had buried a patched brother named Daniel “Hammer” Volk. The Lakeshore Outlaws had not attended his funeral. We had not, in 2014, expected them to.
That had been the equilibrium.
Until the morning of November 14th, 2024, when our chapter buried Eldridge “Reverend” Halvorsen — our former chapter president, fifty years a patched member of the Bay Iron Riders, the man who had founded our chapter in 1987 — in a small Lutheran cemetery on the south side of Green Bay.
Reverend had been seventy-six years old. A Vietnam combat medic. A Bronze Star recipient. The soul of our chapter for thirty-seven years.
He had also been, in fifty-four years of riding, never involved in a single physical altercation with another biker. He had been the only man in our chapter who had, in nineteen years, ever publicly questioned whether the rivalry should continue.
He had been buried on Tuesday November 14th, 2024, at Resurrection Lutheran Church on Velp Avenue in Green Bay.
Forty-six bikers from our chapter and our Sturgeon Bay satellite had been expected.
What none of us had expected — was that thirty-one bikers in Lakeshore Outlaws cuts would roll into the church parking lot in formation at 10:42 a.m. that Tuesday morning.
I had heard the rumble of a large group of motorcycles approaching from the south on Velp Avenue.
The lead bike had pulled into the parking lot.
The lead bike was a Harley-Davidson Road Glide, ridden by a six-foot-three, 260-pound man with a shaved head and a long fully white beard. The cut had a Lakeshore Outlaws MC top rocker. The cut had a Manitowoc WI bottom rocker. The cut had a President center patch.
For the first six seconds — I counted them later — I thought we were about to have an incident at our former president’s funeral.
The lead rider — Frank “Bull” Schoenfeld, the Lakeshore Outlaws chapter president — killed his engine. He got off his bike. Slowly. He raised his hands. Both of them. Open. Palms out.
He walked, alone, twenty feet across the asphalt toward me.
He stopped about ten feet away.
He said, in a voice that carried easily across the cold parking lot, “Brother. I’m Bull Schoenfeld. President, Lakeshore Outlaws, Manitowoc chapter. I’d like to speak with your chapter president, please. With his permission. We do not want to interrupt your service. We are here to pay our respects to Eldridge Halvorsen.”
I had not, in nineteen years, ever heard a Lakeshore Outlaws brother speak respectfully about any member of our chapter.
I had brought our chapter president Padre out to him.
Bull had pulled a single folded white envelope from his saddlebag.
He had handed it to Padre.
What was in the envelope — and what Bull did in the parking lot ninety minutes later, after the burial — is the part of this story I cannot fit in a teaser.
Want to know what was in the letter Reverend wrote to Bull in December of 2023 and what Bull laid on the asphalt at 1:53 p.m.? Drop CUT in the comments — I’ll share more soon.
