BATAVIA, Ohio — Saturday would have been Military Employees Sergeant Matt Maupin’s forty first birthday.
Lots of of bikers got here collectively in Clermont County to honor his legacy and mark a solemn twentieth anniversary.
The Batavia man disappeared in Iraq in 2004 after insurgents attacked his convoy. After 4 years, the navy found his stays.
“It has been a protracted 20 years. However you recognize, it was yesterday for me,” Matt’s father Keith mentioned. “I realized that I can’t change yesterday, however we are able to make a distinction tomorrow.”
After a rendition of the nationwide anthem on an electrical guitar, a motorcade of bikes took off from West Clermont Excessive Faculty to East Fork State Park, the place a memorial pavilion is known as in Maupin’s honor. Bikers got here from as distant as Florida.
The journey was a fundraiser to profit a scholarship for veterans at College of Cincinnati Clermont and Blue Ash.
Proceeds may even go towards the Yellow Ribbon Help Middle, which sends care packages to deployed service members.
The group has already despatched 36,000 packing containers since 2008, Keith mentioned: “I don’t know them, they don’t know me, however they’ll know Matt, as a result of he’s throughout that field with stickers.”
June Wilson, occasions coordinator for the Yellow Ribbon Help Middle, mentioned every time somebody involves the middle and learns about Maupin, “they at all times need to preserve the assist for the household going.”
Because the band performed and meals was served, it was a reminder that the liberty of a motorbike journey doesn’t come with out sacrifice.
“We’re on a mission to guarantee that he and not one of the different Goldstar households’ sons or daughters are misplaced,” Keith mentioned.
