12:07 am: Bobby Allen Wade
Lindsay, Oklahoma: Bobby Allen Wade, 49, had a funeral to get to Tuesday morning, and he'd heard on the 10 o'clock news Monday night that it was going to rain. Slick roads would make the hour-plus trip from his mother-in-law's house in Oklahoma City to his home in Lindsay risky on a motorcycle. Despite protests by his wife, Brenda, Wade set off alone on his 1980 Yamaha ahead of the weather, while Brenda stayed behind to care for her ill mother. Wade ran into a cow at 60 mph. He was one of 10 motorcyclists killed in crashes on June 7 and among the 4,439 cyclists who died in crashes during 2005. "It was just one cow in the middle of the road. Right where he was driving," recounts Wade's sister Diane McKee. "He never saw it. No skid marks whatsoever. He had no time to hit the brakes. The cops said he was doing the right speed limit. He just never saw it coming because it was so dark. You have one headlight on a motorcycle." Wade, who wasn't wearing a helmet, died just 5 miles shy of his home. In Oklahoma only riders 17 and younger are required to wear helmets. Wade was a former Marine who worked as a truck driver for an oil company. He and Brenda were married for 28 years and had 2 daughters, a son, and 4 grandchildren. "He loved to laugh and enjoy life," his sister remembers. "He enjoyed being around family and friends." She says her brother always made their yearly family reunions entertaining, one year "coming up on his motorcycle with a cage on the back and a rattlesnake in it. We were like, 'What did you bring that here for?' And he was like, 'I just had to show you this snake I caught.'" Wade especially liked to swim and fish. "If he was anywhere he was in a pond or a lake or a river. He lived right next to the Washita River. All he had to do was go down and check his line. Sit out all night if he wanted," McKee says. "He would have turned 50 that year and that is something we'll never see."
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"He was going back home for his friend's funeral who also died on a motorcycle a couple of days before," McKee says. "Otherwise he wouldn't be driving at night."