Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.
BEVERLY — Let's just get it out of the way, OK? Bruce Byrne was a motorhead. Motorbikes, motorcars, motor homes — if it had wheels and an engine, Byrne was interested, and the faster they went, the better.
His fascination with the mechanical world wasn't Earth-bound, either. He was also enamored of anything that flew, including World War I biplanes and the space shuttle Endeavor, which he once watched being launched.
But more than anything besides his family, what Byrne treasured most was traveling. And if you think he let the fact that he spent the last 30 years of his life in a wheelchair dictate his itinerary, you didn't know Bruce Byrne.
"I never met a man who complained less than my father," said his son, Michael Byrne.
Byrne died Sunday, May 18, at Salem Hospital at the age of 75.
He once calculated he had piloted the succession of Winnebago motor homes he and his wife, Frances, owned over the years some 240,000 miles, nearly 10 times around the world.
Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, hot-air balloon festivals, an honest-to-goodness hobo convention in Iowa. From the purple mountain majesties of this country to its back roads, the Byrnes have been there, done that, and my oh my, Frances has thousands of neatly cataloged snapshots to prove it.
The couple took up camping because of Byrne's disability, a degenerative muscle disease that first surfaced while he was serving in the Air Force — what else? — during the Korean War. They wanted to see the world, and in the days before handicapped access was mandated, that wasn't so easy.
"Getting onto an airplane or into a motel was very difficult," Michael said. "Most motor parks have a lot of paved areas, and they're very flat."
God bless our mobile home
A Peabody native, Byrne and his wife bought their Amherst Road home in Beverly shortly after marrying in 1957 and have lived there since.
Oddly enough, his limited personal mobility increased the couple's freedom to travel, once they discovered the joys of camping out in a home away from home.
They started out with a minihome, but by 1983 they moved up to a full, Class A, 24-foot Winnebago motor home and joined the world of the Winnies.
There are people who enjoy traveling, even love it. Then there are Winnies, folks devoted not only to hitting the road, but to seeing the world in a travel home built by Winnebago Industries of Forest City, Iowa.
Winnies form local clubs that hold rallies throughout the year, and they're more than an excuse to venture to a new and distant destination. They're a celebration of being, as the words on the back of the Byrne's mobile home proclaimed, "On The Road Again."
Though he needed hand controls to do it, "he loved to drive, and he did all the driving," Frances said. On the way to some rallies, as many as 20 rigs in a row would travel caravan-style, she said.
Byrne was president of a local club, the Mass Bay Winnies, from 1984 to 1985, and of the statewide organization, the Pilgrim Winnies, from 1985 to 1987.
"He was elected president because he was a talker," Frances joked.
"And he made friends very, very easily," daughter-in-law Jane Byrne added.
He was also a longtime member of the Handicapped Travelers Club, with whom the Byrnes made their first camping trip.
Byrne organized a Winnie rally on Salem's Winter Island one year.
"We brought in belly dancers," Frances said. "We swept the floor of the hangar, and they danced in there. Everybody loved it."
When driving started getting difficult, the Byrnes bought a mobile home in a park in Punta Gorda, Fla. They'd stay in Beverly through Christmas, then join their snowbird friends in the Sunshine State, remaining into April.
This was the first winter in 18 years the couple did not head south.
If Byrne loved being in motion, there was one form of travel he had no stomach for. Airman 2nd Class Bruce W. Byrne, this guy who wasn't a pilot but who would jump in anything with wings that someone else was willing to fly, was sent home from Korea on a Navy transport ship, sick as a dog the whole way.
"The Navy guys, they let them fly home," Frances said with a chuckle. "Who's to figure?"
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