Over one hundred bikers drove past the house of a terminally-ill dad in Ladybank on Sunday to pay their respects to a “life-long biker”.
Frank Foster, 61, is currently on end of life care at his home in the Ladybank area of Fife due to a tumour in his brain.
After beating lung cancer just two years ago, the news came as a massive shock to Frank’s four children and wife, Eileen.
Originally from Kennoway, Frank worked as an offshore crane operator and has a life-long passion for motorbikes.
Frank’s daughter, Donna Villarreal, was trying to plan ahead for his funeral after he was eventually put on end of life care when she approached the biking community in Glenrothes.
Initially, she had been hoping to plan something with the bikers for his funeral when they suggested driving by Frank’s house to allow him to experience motorbikes one last time.
Donna said: “It’s been a bit difficult but he’s been a fighter up until the very end and he’s never lost his humour.
“Up until last Saturday we were still thinking ‘he’s going to fight this and he’s going to win’, but on Saturday the headaches got too much and he was in quite a bit of pain.
“It’s been quite a dramatic decline and a deterioration of his health – he’s lost his sight and his balance.
“We had to get palliative care involvement in the house so we managed to get him on a hospital bed and he’s on a syringe driver and things.
“I’m actually a nurse practitioner so I’ve just been nursing him at home with a lot of palliative care involvement and they’ve been amazing.”
Drive by organised in less than 24 hours
Donna said Frank has been into motorbikes since he was eight-years-old so she was keen to do something special to remember him by.
“He was always on bikes,” Donna said.
“He only sold his bikes two years ago when he had lung cancer and always promised that when he got better, he would get another bike but unfortunately better days never came.
“I reached out to Alan Mitchell (a member of the Glenrothes biking community) and he’s the one who offered and said ‘why don’t we actually do something while he’s still alive?’
“And within less than 24-hours they managed to organise that.”
Donna said she and her family were taken-aback by the amount of bikers who turned up to pay their respects to Frank on Sunday.
Bikers brought ‘sunshine and happiness’ amid difficult time
She said: “I genuinely didn’t expect it to have such a big turn out.
“I think it just brought a wee bit of sunshine and a wee bit of happiness to what is a really difficult and challenging time so he did smile and it was nice to see him smile.
“When they went past my dad managed to open his eyes and he was doing a hand signal to tell them to rev up the engine and he was trying to guess what bikes they were.
“He could smell the smoke and the exhaust fumes from the engines – he thoroughly enjoyed it.
“I think it made him feel very loved, I don’t even know the word to describe it but we’re all extremely grateful to the biking community for what they’ve done just to bring a wee bit of joy to a really sad time.”
