Thirty years ago, a request Murray Becker received from a Marine changed his life for the better.
Becker was the owner of the first bike shop in Heber and this Marine asked if he could come to Fort Douglas for a couple of weeks in the evenings to help him fix up old bikes he had collected from various sheriff’s departments.
The goal? Give them to families at a Thanksgiving meal sponsored by Utah Health and Social Services.
“It was just fantastic,” said Becker. “The kids were just stunned in their tracks; they wouldn’t even touch the bike until you insisted that they take it. ‘So it’s mine? How long can I keep it?’ I told them, ‘Forever, if you take care of it.’ And they said, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and they were racing around and riding around the parking lot. And it was just a really fun afternoon.”
That memory never left him.
“Thirty years later, I sat here and I thought, ‘Geez, I wonder if I could pull off something up here and get some bikes and donate them somewhere,’ he said. “And I put the word out and I kind of figured I’d get eight or 10 or 12 bikes and I got 50 and they’re still coming.”
Becker said he started in April and has probably spent 50-60 hours a week fixing them up. In the beginning, he sold a handful of them to pay for parts and has since received a few donations, a gesture that stunned him.
Becker is finally starting to wind everything down and he said finding a home for the bikes initially proved more difficult than he anticipated. Social services didn’t want to deal with the hassle of paperwork and he ultimately donated them to the Christian Center of Park City and its Heber Thrift Store.
This project has been all-consuming. So, what keeps him pedaling forward?
“The more kids you can get on properly working decent bikes–they just might become riders for life like myself,” he said. “I’m 72 years old, and I’ve been riding non-stop since I was a kid. So you know, if you can do that to a child and it’s better for the world. It’s better for the kid. It’s better all the way around. If you can keep them out of a car and put them on a bike. God bless them.”
And certainly, the lives of many local kids on new bikes will be blessed by his efforts.