07/14/2022
***Family Statement in regards to recent events***
Good Afternoon All,
On this the one year anniversary of my father’s death a day that should be filled with renewed mourning and memories past, we the Rinehart family feel it is imperative to make a statement in regards to recent events in the community. First, let me start by being absolutely clear that we have always had the utmost respect, as a family for the biker community, and our beliefs in the positive activities in the community that they do is resolute. We believe this is easily seen through the multiple events and contributions that our family’s business “Leather or Not” has participated in and contributed towards. While my father was the face of the business, my mother supported him constantly behind the scenes while working full-time herself in efforts to deliver on my father’s dreams and aspirations, and together their financial backing is what kept the business to be able to continue giving back to the community. So, it was deeply disheartening to us as a family when we stumbled upon by pure happenstance that there was an event being advertised on Facebook displaying my father’s name and likeness without any of the event’s organizers trying to establish a line of communication with us so that we could collaborate and grant our blessing at the inception of the event. We found the failure of the event organizers to try to reach out to us in any way a breach of ethical and societal norms. There were a variety of avenues that they could have sought to make contact with us via phone call, email, Facebook, (my father’s Facebook, email, or business page), the funeral home, or just through the many members of the biker community that know us. While as we stated in the letter prepared for us by our family attorney that we had no issues with the positive intentions of the event we as a family felt we had a duty in an effort to protect the deceased’s legacy to gain a full understanding of the details and activities of the event. The fact that many entities, some of them being commercial, were participating in and advertising the event led us to have many questions that we sought answers to as any family would when put in this position. The failure of the event organizers to open a line of communication with us prior to advertising the event meant that we as a family had to initiate the contact in an effort to establish a line of communication, which we agreed was best to be handled by our attorney. The sole point of the organizers receiving the letters from our attorney was to establish a line of communication so that we could have our questions answered, and be granted some assurances from the event organizers. We never intended to profit in any way from this event, but would like to have been reimbursed for the cost of our attorney writing and sending the letters especially since the need for an attorney arose from no fault of our own. This was a direct result of the initial failure of the event organizers to reach out to us prior to advertising the event. The cancellation of the planned event was in no way a decision of ours. Our attorney nor any family member was ever contacted by the representatives of the lead organization behind the event even though our attorney tried to establish a line of communication with them multiple times. It was communicated to our attorney through a secondary organizer that they were unhappy about receiving the letters, and that the event was to be scrapped. So again, we desire to make this abundantly clear it was the decision of the organizers to go ahead and cancel the event, rather than meet with our family to address our concerns and provide us with some assurances. If they were to have had a meeting with our family, I am sure an agreement could have been reached and the event could have continued as planned. We apologize to the biker community and to those who were excited to celebrate my father’s enduring legacy. We hope that down the road the community and the family will be able to collaborate and throw an event that is worthy of celebrating the life of Ronald Rinehart. We wish nothing, but the best to the original organizers of the event, and we will keep supporting the biker community as we always have in the past.
Thank You, God Bless, and Ride Safely,
The Rinehart Family
