Ted Leimbach

MY BROTHER TED: Dane Leimbach

Originally published in the Winter 2005 issue #29 of "Still....Keeping Track"

After being an only child for the first 71/2 years of my life, in February of '59, my parents had my first brother, and chose to call him Paul (after my Dad) Theodore (after mom's brother Ted). Because my father's name was also Paul, it was decided that Paul Theodore would be called Teddy, (and of course later, Ted) to keep the confusion in the household to a minimum.

Since there was such a large age difference between us, I wasn't too involved with Ted's life as a young child, simply because older brothers don't want to have anything to do with younger ones. That's just how life was. I'm sure we bonded as brothers and I do remember my mother telling me more than once, that both of my brothers (Orrin came along two years later) looked up to me and that I should behave in a manner that would be appropriate for a hero.

I got my first motorcycle when I was 16, a 100cc Penton Berkshire, and while this is another thing that I don't remember hearing about, I'm sure that my brothers were enamored by that wonderful piece of excitement. Since this time was way before the era when there were mini bikes, the brothers could just wish that they could ride my bike, and once in a while, I'd gift them with rides around the farm.

When Honda came out with their SL70 minicycle, the boys must have been hounding my parents unmercifully, because it wasn't too long after they appeared, that the boys ponied up the money from their savings to buy bikes for themselves. At first, they just rode them around the farm with one another, but eventually, they wanted to follow my footsteps and begin to race. The short part of the story is that Ted became a pretty accomplished rider, and became one of the targets for the other mini riders in the area, to beat at the local motocrosses.

As Ted grew, his riding skills developed and when he finally got big enough, Ted inherited one of my cast-off 100's, I think an ISDT bike from the previous year. I would have ridden the bike through the next Qualifier season, but then it was time for a new owner, and I believe that was Ted's first full size motorcycle.

Just as with the minicycles, Ted took to riding the 100 like a duck to water, and he forwarded his reputation as a winner in the local motocross scene. Since I was involved in the ISDT type events, and as my mother told me, my brothers looked up to me, Ted also wanted to become involved with those events as well. Once Ted started to ride the qualifiers, he quickly adapted his riding skills to that type of event, and once again, top placings came with some amount of ease.

Our father was 5'10” tall and while I didn't seem to have inherited any of those height genes, Ted did. As he aged, he grew past me, and at some point, while I was still enjoying riding the smaller bikes, Ted decided that he wanted to begin to ride the bigger machines. In 1978, after the Penton era closed, Ted continued to ride bikes that were manufactured by KTM, and he became a very accomplished woods rider. His hare scramble skills, carved out of his ISDT qualifier riding, made him one of the prime candidates for overalls whenever he rode a local event. Ted's first ISDT was the Swedish event in 1978, and I believe that he earned a gold medal in that event.

Ted continued to ride the KTM's through the 1979 season and toward the end of that year, Jack Penton, who had signed a contract with Kawasaki Motors Corporation to run an enduro program for them, signed Ted to a contract to ride for him on Kawasaki's. Again that season, Ted managed to qualify for the ISDT in Brioude, France, and was looking forward to riding on the US team in the ISDT.

At this time in my riding career, I had been riding for over 10 years, and the drive for me to continue riding, was being fueled by Ted's success. I enjoyed teaching him the nuances of woods riding and playing the games that it took to finish well in the ISDT events.

Outside of the motorcycle world, Ted was still a farm boy, growing up on the “End O' Way” farm. Until I graduated from high school, I worked for Dad on the farm, as did both Orrin and Ted. During the summer of 1970, I went to work for Uncle Ted (Penton), and that led me further into the motorcycle world. I attended Wilmington College for two years before going to work for Penton Imports full time in the summer of 1972.

Because of the direction my career path took, my mother and father realized that if they wanted one of their heirs to continue to run the “End O' Way, they would have to change the way that they looked at the boys. Instead of just being their children, they sat down and made them partners in the farm. Despite Ted's love of motorcycle riding, he really liked the farm work and as a result, he was headed in the direction of being the next generation farmer in the family. While Orrin could do the work, Ted really took to it with a passion. He espoused my father's work ethic, and just like my dad, Ted would be hard at it until the farm work was finished for the day.

Once Ted and Orrin graduated from high school, they both followed my father's footsteps to The Ohio State University. Ted got wrapped up in the agriculture program and Orrin, who was more of a deep thinker, headed into computer studies. Ted continued to ride while he was attending school, though it did take a bite out of his riding time.

It seems that every family has one child that has a social streak that is stronger than other children, and in our family that was Ted. As he got into high school, he became a very popular guy, and seemed to be in the right time and place to party. I don't remember him getting into any major troubles, but he did know how to have a good time. I do remember that one time, long after the fact, my folks found some proof that Ted had held a pretty comprehensive party at our house. Dad was cleaning out the well, which was in front of the house, and down in the well he found a half dozen or so beer cans, that he was pretty sure he'd not thrown down the well.

Not only did he know how to have a good time, the girls seemed to take a real fancy to him as well. So with his good nature, party skills, and good looks, it wasn't hard for Ted to have a few girls chasing him much of the time. But because of the riding thing that took up much of his time, he never had a long time relationship that steered him from the motorcycle world.

At the end of the summer of 1980 as we were getting ready to go to the ISDT in Brioude, France, things changed forever in all of our lives. One afternoon, we were working on the bikes at our shop in Lorain, Ohio, and a strong thundershower blew through the area. It didn't last long but long enough to put down some heavy rain. Just as the rain was ending, we heard a number of emergency vehicles rush past our shop, up to the intersection two blocks away, and turn down under the railroad underpass. We really didn't take much notice because the shop was two blocks from St. Joseph's Hospital with their ambulance service and two blocks away from one of Lorain's fire stations. We were used to hearing the sirens from emergency vehicles all the time.

Not too long after we heard the emergency vehicles rush in that direction, we got a call at the shop, from my parents, that Ted was in a terrible accident, and he was in St. Joe's intensive care unit.

Ted had finished working at home on the farm that day, and was going to come to the shop to work on his Six Day bike. After he stopped at the shop to “check in”, he decided that he needed to go over the “high level bridge” to McDonalds to get something to eat. As he was returning, that was when the thundershower struck, and there was a small river of water running down the bridge and across all four lanes from the roadway as it exited the bridge. When Ted came down off the bridge and hit the water, his Ford Festiva hydroplaned and slid into the path of an oncoming truck. Even though Ted was wearing his seat belt, he hit his head on the door post and was knocked unconscious along with severely breaking his left leg.

The EMT's got him to the hospital and the ER doc's fixed him up as best they could, but he still didn't regain consciousness, so all we could do was wait and see what happened next.

The ISDT was coming up in two weeks. The rest of us had to leave to go to France to compete and my parents both felt that it was best that I go, because they were pretty sure that is what Ted would have wanted.

On the morning of the first day, when Ted was to have started the ISDT, he passed away as the result of complication from an embolism in his neck. It will go without explanation, that was the absolutely most difficult time in my life. Not only had I just lost a brother, but I had just lost the drive in my life in motorcycling. That day, my KDX 125 that we had built specially for the ISDT gave up on me that first morning, and I DNF'd my last ISDT.

The next spring, I tried to get back into riding again, but when we got to the first ISDT qualifier at the Zink Ranch in Oklahoma, I just couldn't do it. There was just no drive to ride a motorcycle any more, because I'd lost my inspiration.

Even though there was such an age difference between us, I was as close to Ted as any brothers would be. Once he got into the motorcycle world, we became even closer, because I enjoyed watching him learn about the sport that I'd adopted as my passion and vocation. He was a great person who never got to realize his place in life and was not able to contribute everything to our lives, but will always be fondly remembered.