Dane Leimbach passed away 7 years ago today.

[Paul Danik]

Greetings,

   As hard as it is to believe, Dane has now been gone 7 years.

   In 2000 on the way home from Vintage Days in California John asked for my thoughts on what made the Penton era so very special, and Dane was most certainly a key part of it.

    From his keen intellect and ability to analyze and solve a problem whether it be on the trail during the Six Days, or at Penton R & D helping his Uncle John get thru the difficult Motoplat issues, Dane could handle it all. Combining those talents with his very pleasant and easy going personality made him an invaluable asset to the entire Penton organization as well as a cherished friend to many.

http://www.pentonusa.org/GalleryServerPro/default.aspx?moid=1952&hr=1

Paul

[johnborn]

It is hard to believe it has been that long. he certainly was everything you said. my first recollection of Dane was when i was about 12 or so my dad and i stopped for lunch at hardees in lorain. this fellow i did not know,and dad  started talking about how they were able to go fast on the smaller motorcycles, and what stuck out the most was Dane saying "you've got to be willing to grab the next gear for just that split second longer, when everyone else is grabbing their brakes."

[firstturn]

Thanks Paul for reminding us and for the great tribute to Dane.

Ron Carbaugh

[Admin]

To learn more about Dane, click on the link below and go to Page 4 & 5 of Still...Keeping Track, Summer 1998, Issue No. 1:

http://pentonusa.org/publications/newsletters/SKT1.pdf

Bill

[ALB]

Paul, thanks for the reminder.
Bill, thanks for posting the link to Dane's member profile.

That article was printed in the very first Penton Owners Group newsletter. At that time we were still trying to figure out what to put in the newsletters. Dane, as I found out during the later years as I got to know him, was the first one to step up to the plate and wrote up that article to get things going. If you pay attention to his humble words at the beginning, most of the article was about his Uncle John and the new Penton motorcycles. He did not talk about his achievements in riding and racing his Penton motorcycles. If I had a time machine, I would go back to when he wrote that article and I would have had him write more pages of his experiences riding Six Days.

I first met Dane about 6 months prior to the start of the POG. I met him at his house on a Saturday morning with the intention of picking up his Six-Day medals to have my sister frame them up for the display I was putting together for Mid-Ohio in July. He had 2 big boxes sitting on the picnic table in the back yard. In those boxes were all the Six Day memorabilia that he collected. The items in the boxes were layered with each year that he attended a six day event with route maps, banners, brochures, directional arrows etc. All of these items well organized. We spent about an hour together with him going through each layer, spreading them out on the table to show me Six Day items that most people (spectators) never saw, unless you were a Six Day rider.

His Six Day metals were in his barn, fastened inside a home made wood case with glass top. He gave me those medals and I left there on the way home feeling honored to having met him and having his trust.

Alan Buehner