The Keith Hetzel Story

This is it.  It’s finally here.  You’ve been waiting 358 days for it.  This is your favorite week of the entire year.  Each year you come to the Sturgis Rally to create a week of memories – your first ride down legendary Main Street, that first taste of alligator on a stick or laughing with friends around a campfire under the star spattered Black Hills sky.  These are the things that bring you back year after year to write your own chapter in Sturgis history.  To attend the Sturgis Rally is to become part of a rich collective history and, more than that, to become part of an extended family.

  In 1993, the Hetzels joined this larger family for the first time.  Brothers Scott and Keith rode from Dietrich, Illinois to meet their uncle, Jim, who came out from Arizona.  After that first year, the family reunion at Sturgis became an annual event.  “We looked forward to going to the rally every year because it was our time together,” recalls younger brother Scott.  Like all seasoned rally veterans, the Hetzels always hit their favorite hotspots like the #10 Saloon in Deadwood, the Buffalo Chip Campground and the Full Throttle Saloon.  But it was riding that kept them coming back to Sturgis every year.  Scott and Keith treasured the freedom that came from riding their motorcycles and took full advantage of the countless awe-inspiring rides through the Black Hills.  In 1995, Scott and his wife, Kim, secretly married on Bear Butte Mountain.  The rest of the Hetzel clan had no idea they tied the knot, which made for one of the family’s fondest rally memories.

  During the 2000 rally, Scott and Keith were on their way back from one of their favorite rides, Devil’s Tower, when they came upon an accident.  A fellow rider had careened off the highway into a ditch and entangled himself in barbed wire.  The Hetzels were first at the scene and like anyone in the close-knit motorcycling family, immediately worked to free the man and stabilize him.  A paramedic unit from another accident responded and Scott and Keith helped to move the man into the ambulance.  The man survived and lived to ride another day, thanks to his brothers, the Hetzels.  Ironically, just one week after Keith helped to save the life of a fellow rider, he was tragically killed in a four-wheeler race.

  Although Keith Hetzel is no longer with us, his spirit lives on through the legacy of his memory; a memory forever preserved through the Sturgis Brick Project.  The Sturgis rally will never be the same for the Hetzel family, they can never experience it the way it once was.  Instead, they come to Sturgis every year to celebrate the life of a partner, brother and friend whose memory will live in Sturgis for each rally to come.

  The Sturgis Brick Project is a restoration project for the City of Sturgis.  It is a way to say thank you to the city for hosting one of the premier motorcycling events in the country as well as a way for rally patrons like the Hetzels to honor their memories and preserve their place in the history of the Sturgis rally.  Be a part of this unique project by commemorating your piece of history in this timeless formation of memories, brick by brick.