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Injured biker itching to get back on road

Shirley Burdette (right) gestures as she describes how the accident happened that she and her husband David (left) were involved in when they were hit on their motorcycle by a hit and run driver just before Memorial Day. Staff photo by Pat Auckerman

PAT AUCKERMAN/MBR Shirley Burdette (right) gestures as she describes how the accident happened that she and her husband David (left) were involved in when they were hit on their motorcycle by a hit and run driver just before Memorial Day. Staff photo by Pat Auckerman

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By Jessica Heffner, Staff Writer 9:28 PM Sunday, September 5, 2010

MADISON TWP. — Head injury or not, Dave Burdette Jr. knows he’ll keep on riding.

He may need 23 pills a day for the short-term memory loss, and his wife, Shirley, may have to remind him to take them. But Burdette still remembers where to find his 1980 Harley-Davidson low rider: at the garage, awaiting repairs after his accident.

On May 29, the Madison Twp. couple went riding after a long day’s work. It was a few minutes before midnight, and all David remembers is trying to avoid a sedan driving erratically on South Verity Parkway in Middletown. The car turned left in front of him. Neither had been wearing helmets.

Thirty-one days later, David awoke at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, asking for his wife. While Shirley’s injuries were minor, she spent 52 days in the hospital too, at her husband’s side. For her, every injury and surgery was a “we” — from the blood clots, brain trauma, six broken ribs and shoulder, to the lost spleen and more, the Burdettes lived it all together.

“I had to think positively to get through that whole nightmare, because that is what it was,” Shirley said.

Her mother, Shirley Roark, remembers the bad dream as a cascade of wires and tubes spilling from David’s broken, bedridden body. “Surreal,” she said.

And while rehab has gotten David walking on his own, he’s still coping with a mystery: The dark Buick LeSabre that hit them fled that night, and no arrests have been made.

This wasn’t David’s first wreck; one in Dayton a few years ago totaled his bike. Still, he’s itching to ride again. “If you fall getting out of bed are you never going to get in bed again?” he said. “It’s been a hard road.”

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