While others are celebrating joy and peace for the holidays, Melody Rose Tappe is planning a “memorial ride” for the husband she lost Dec. 2 in a fatal motorcycle crash on Riggs Road near State Route 347.
Dustin Michael Tappe was aged 38 and the father of seven. He left behind a month-old baby.
Dustin was riding home to his family in the Maricopa Meadows from work at Sysco Foods in Tempe when the fatal Riggs wreck happened.
“It’s just a way of bringing him home,” Melody Tappe said Friday afternoon by phone, her voice cracking with emotion. “We just want to bring him home.”
For Melody, the pain of her loss is only intensified by the holidays, which are complicate by an uncertain future.
“We’ve gotten quite a bit of help,” she said. “We’re just trying to figure out how to get past February.”
Donations to the family can be made here and here.
Melody insists the Feb. 2 memorial ride is not a fundraiser. She said it is strictly so family, friends and other riders can pay their respects to Dustin.
“Those who do not have motorcycles are welcome to joins us at the memorial on Riggs,” she said.
The Tappe family has built a roadside memorial to Dustin, less than a mile from the intersection with State Route 347.
“I thought riding would be what was best,” she said, adding her husband did not want a funeral.
“Basically, Dustin loved to ride,” she recalled. “All the kids have ridden with him.”
Riders will gather at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 8 at the parking lot of Fry’s Food Store on John Wayne Parkway. From there they will ride northbound on SR 347, take Interstate 10 east and then take the Riggs Road exit and stop for the memorial. The riders will then head south on SR 347 back to Fry’s.
Shortly after Dustin’s death, Melody said: “He was the most incredible man I have ever known and even better father. We were a fairytale. On and off again since we were children and finally becoming adults and getting married on Nov. 16, 2020. He was my soulmate; my everything! He was the man that would do anything for anyone, especially his family.”
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