Man with MS builds motorcycle

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Ken Pavlick climbs onto the three-wheeled motorcycle he, his son and grandsons built. Disease had limited Pavlick’s mobility. Matt HUber/Commercial-News

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July 20, 2010

BY DENNIS BARTLOW Commercial-News The Commercial-News Tue Jul 20, 2010, 02:04 AM CDT

- — Ken Pavlick loves to ride motorcycles. He has ridden one since he was a teenager. The advancing stages of multiple sclerosis has put Pavlick in a wheelchair, but he yearned for his cycling days.

A year in the making, Pavlick and his son and grandsons have put together a motorcycle that he can ride. He has revved it up to 70 miles per hour on the interstate.

“I tried it slow (on the road in front of his home) at first,” he said. “I am comfortable with it out on the road.”

The front end is a motorcycle; the back end is a Ford Taurus, with the motor.

“I rode a (regular) motorcycle as long as I could,” said Pavlick, 65, who lives in Warren County just off Indiana Route 63.

“I knew I needed a heavy duty front end,” Pavlick said. “My two grandsons, Derek and Zack, helped. They tore out parts of a motorcycle and a car.”

Pavlick was able to do most of the construction.

“I welded and bolted it together, and then I had my son, J.R., check it and strengthen it,” he said.

“ I started on it in the cold (last year), and it was a long summer last year,” he said. “I finished up this spring with the mirror and wheels.”

The farthest he has gone from his home on the motorcycle is to Oakwood.

“I have enjoyed my motorcycle days through the years,” he said. It was often in his transportation to work at the former Illinois Bell, where he took early retirement after 25 years.

“I started riding a motor scooter when I was 10 or 11 years old,” he said.

But Pavlick hasn’t let MS slow him down. He serves as senior adult minister at First Church of the Nazarene in Danville, where he works about 15 hours a week teaching a Sunday School class, guiding the Keen-Agers senior citizen program and visiting hospitals and nursing homes.

Previously, he served five years at the Covington Church of the Nazarene and the West Lebanon Church of the Nazarene when both were undergoing building projects.

Pavlick grew up in the Grape Creek area and attended the old two-room Grape Creek School. He graduated from Westville High School in 1962. He has several other hobbies including woodworking.

Pavlick was diagnosed with primary progressive MS in June of 1998.

“By 2001 I was on crutches,” he said. “I couldn’t support myself.”

He now gets around home with a motorized wheelchair.

“The (motorcycle) really helped me, because I had to get up and down (when building it). It helped me build up strength.

“I couldn’t sit still. It is good to do what you can. It helps me.”

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