In December 2017, during Lisa Wright’s first year of coordinating Wreaths Across America in Laurel, the wreaths didn’t arrive in time for the ceremony she carefully had planned. She thought she would look back at that as the biggest hiccup she would encounter in her efforts to honor our nation’s veterans.

Everyone knows that our military members risk their lives while serving our country. Yet many of us do not realize that this risk often continues for them once they come home. They struggle to fit into civilian life and yearn for that sense of belonging that they had with their fellow servicemen. It’s for this reason that, since the 1960s, so many veterans have found that camaraderie at the motorcycle club where they can bond over a common love for motorcycles and the “open road”.

Shannon “Flash” Hume, the Sergeant at Arms of the Laurel, Maryland chapter of Chosen Sons Motorcycle Club and the chair of the board for the organization, Ride for the Fallen, can relate.