RIP my Brother

My bedroom door opened near midnight last Friday and the sound awoke me.  Through the bright hallway light I see my son walking toward me.  He begins to speak and says he has some really bad news to tell me.  My first thought was that he had crashed the car.  Christopher proceeds to tell me that my older Brother Joey had been killed.  His life taken by some drunken scumbag that did not even have a license nor should have even been in this country of ours.

In Loving Memory of

Joey Vaughn Locke

February 23, 1964 - October 9, 2015

Killed. Still hard to grasp what has actually happened.  It has been a week since my Brothers murder.  In all honesty I expected him to die in some high speed crash but I did not expect him to be killed by some piece of shit illegal immigrant.

Both my brothers are now gone.  It is so hard to accept this.  I keep looking at old photos and remembering all the fun times we had.  Then I come back to reality and they are gone.

Joey was my older brother and was always there for me.   I still remember that time while we were hunting on the farm when we were little kids.  We were working our way through  the woods to another track of land and crossed by a trailer where someone was living.  At the time I did not know who it was but it turned out to be my crazy grandmother's sister.  I think she was a little mental because she got a gun and started shooting at us.  We took off running like a bat out of hell.  I heard a few bullets narrowly miss us.  I kept stopping to wait for Joey but he kept telling me to keep running.  I did not want to leave him.  We reached a fence and looked back to see if the crazy lady was still there.  We could see her reloading her rifle.  Joey grabbed me and tossed me over the fence and told me to run like hell.   Luckily the old bitch was a poor shot.  I have dozens of more stories. Each one Joey was my protector and was there for me.

One of the best summers of my life was back in 1990.  I spent the summer up at the farm with Joey and his girlfriend Lisa. We spent time on the beach, we shot guns and we also hit a few local races. I remember both of us getting 1st and 2nd on that night in the Open Money class. Joey got the holeshot and took off.  I went down in the first turn and broke my rear brake lever.  I charge back the entire race and passed over 20 other riders to catch Joey on the last lap.  He saw me behind him and just let me by.  He wanted me to win because I had ridden so hard.  To Joey we had both won and we did.

My last event I ever raced with Joey was the Cohutta 100 Mountain Bike race.  That was one long day in the saddle for sure.  Joey  and our friend Selby had competed in the shorter event.  He always wanted to return to the event and complete the entire 100 mile distance.  Ever since he turned 50 he talked about doing more endurance events like we used to.

Joey had a very hard time dealing with the death of my little brother John.  Joey was our older brother and he was supposed to protect us which he always did.  Now Joey and John are together again.  I love you and will miss you both so much.