Biker lost left leg in May Wisc. crash

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - One of the people hospitalized after a car plowed into a formation of motorcycles in Wisconsin three months ago told 24 Hour News 8 he's ready to get on with his life.

On May 31, a vehicle crossed the center line of Highway 151 in Fond Du Lac County, heading straight into 12 motorcycles from the Muskegon Motorcycle Gang.

The date is just about all Rick Van Dam remembers of the crash.

"I lost track of how many surgeries," he said. "You know, you just don't want to think about, 'How long am I going to be in the hospital?' You just got to think about what's the next thing I've got to overcome or the next thing I've got to get through."

Van Dam spent three weeks in a coma.

When he woke, he didn't know that his friends Dan Winsemius and Doug Yonkers were dead.

And he didn't know that he had lost his left leg in the wreck.
 
"You just kept trying to explain to him why he was there and what was going on and what was going on around him and telling him you loved him that he was going to be all right," said Rick's wife Sheri Van Dam.
 
Van Dam spent the last several weeks rebuilding his strength at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids.  

He said he'd be lying to say he's not angry at the driver responsible.

But he and Sheri said they're not focused on that and that it's time to move on.

"I'm just trying to do what I got to do get home and get back to normalcy," said Van Dam.

Van Dam gets to go home Wednesday.

"It's an amazing thing and I just appreciate all the love and support from all the people," said Sheri. "And most of the people were people I'd never met in my life."

Hundreds of motorcyclists are expected outside Mary Free Bed at 5 p.m. Wednesday to escort Van Dam home to North Muskegon.  

Police said Clinton Lovelace was the driver of the vehicle that hit the bikers -- and that he was on drugs when the crash happened. Lovelace now faces 12 counts of various crimes, including vehicular homicide while using a controlled substance.