Lee and Brenda Clemens with their granddaughter Rheyanna “Anna” Clemens
On a raw strip of Hull Street Road, in a stark white concrete block building, beats one of the rugged hearts of Richmond’s motorcycle culture.
At its center is Lee Clemens, 6 feet tall and 215 pounds, with big knuckles and a grip strengthened by years of working with wrenches and the other heavy instruments of motorcycle building and repair. Age has earned him a bright white goatee, and when Clemens wears a straw cowboy hat, he might remind you of KFC’s Colonel Sanders, but with a punch.
At 70, Clemens is still someone you don’t want to mess with.
“I’ve always told people I’m not in the shit business,” he says. “I don’t give any, and I don’t take any. If you come in here and give me a rash of it, I’ll goddamn throw you out as sure as the sun comes up the next day. I’m not into it. At the same time, if you treat me fair, I’ll treat you exactly the same way.”
He opened his business, Departure Bike Works, in 1972 — “Didn’t have a business license till ’73,” he says with a laugh — and ever since, he’s been winning a following among those (mostly the Harley Davidson crowd) who are looking for motorcycle parts or repairs, or who want a custom-built machine.
The most expensive bike that ever went out of the shop topped $75,000, he says.
Custom motorcycles are a specialty that earned Clemens’ shop a turn on the Learning Channel’s “Biker Build-Off” program in 2006.
“We have a reputation of craftsmanship when it comes to building bikes, and great expertise on keeping them running,” he says. “So people feel comfortable bringing us their $50,000 motorcycle to work on.”
To lighten the atmosphere, he has a sign in his shop that reads: “Rates: if you watch us, $85. If you give us advice, $95. If you help or assist, $105. If you’ve worked on it yourself, $125.”
Today, the going repair rate at Departure is $95 per hour, though Clemens is thinking about raising it to $100, to keep pace with other top shops in the region.
Lee Clemens and his wife, Brenda, discuss motorcycle parts.
As he talks about the business, Brenda, his wife of 51 years, is speaking with a customer on the phone.
“Eighty FXS,” she shouts across the room, referring to a vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle “What size battery would that be?”
“It would be a YB 16, Brenda,” Clemens shouts back. He says he knows much of his extensive inventory of new and vintage parts by heart.
“I remember numbers,” he says, “I don’t know why. I don’t remember somebody’s name for 10 seconds.”
His clientele is demographically and racially diverse: “all kinds of people — doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, bricklayers, painters,” Clemens says. “Since the construction industry has picked up … I’m seeing more of my old customers coming back in.”
A relative in Galax gave him his first ride on a motorcycle when he was 5 or 6 years old. Even though he burned his leg on the motorcycle’s tailpipe, Clemens says the thrill of that first ride has stayed with him for a lifetime.
Later, he rode motorcycles with his father as he was growing up in the Shenandoah Valley, and followed a career path that took him to a local speed shop — where automobile enthusiasts can find parts to boost their vehicle’s horsepower — in Richmond and later to his own shop.
Clemens once had a team that drag-raced motorcycles on a quarter-mile track. At one point in the 1990s, he says, his team reached the No. 1 ranking in the country, in its motorcycle class.
“We battled the top dog for five years,” he says. His top speed was reaching 170 mph in eight seconds. But he gave up the drag racing when the annual cost jumped from about $70,000 a year to nearly a million dollars, as deep-pocketed competitors jumped into the field.
Clemens says he has encountered every manner of motorcycle rider.
“You’ve always got two sides to the motorcycle community,” he says. “You’ve got the outlaw side and you’ve got the enthusiasts side. There’s guys who are going to walk that line, then there are guys who are going to make a commitment to one side or the other.”
And, yes, he is well acquainted with both the Hell’s Angels and the Pagans, two motorcycle clubs whose members have frequently made headlines for a lot of the wrong reasons, including criminal activity.
“I’ve known Hells Angels my entire life across the U.S. I think highly of them. The ones I’ve met and interacted with have really been good guys. But in any group of people there are going to be assholes and bad guys,” Clemens says.
Members of the Pagans also have been in his shop, Clemens says, but so have members of the Blue Knights, a law enforcement motorcycle club, and the Red Knights, whose members are largely firefighters.
One of the great tragedies of Clemens’ and his wife’s life was the loss of their son, Travis, in an April 2001 motorcycle accident. He left behind a then 2-year-old daughter, Rheyanna “Anna” Clemens, who has been raised by her grandparents on both sides.
Anna, now 18, lives in Dinwiddie County’s McKenney community. She graduated from high school in June and recently won a scholarship covering tuition and expenses to the University of Virginia School of Engineering.
Anna says by email that she became interested in engineering in part because of the time she spent in her grandfather’s motorcycle shop.
“I have always asked large or out-of-the-box questions,” she says, “and when I was little, I would ask how an engine worked. My granddad would go into full depth of explaining and breaking down all the specifics in how a motorcycle runs. He would lose me after talk of carburetors and pistons and such, but as I’ve grown older, being curious about how things move together to create something like an engine has become more interesting.
“Granddad himself has that interest, and he continually searches for answers to questions about things he is interested in, and that curiosity is a thing that has driven me to be interested in engineering.”
She expresses concern about the bad light in which many motorcyclists have been portrayed.
Anna says her experience is that “big, bad biker dudes” often resemble teddy bears more than outlaws, at least in the encounters she’s had with them.
”They are big, many are covered in tattoos, and they ride loud bikes…[but] the motorcycle community is a tight-knit community that is willing to stick its neck out for others who need it. It is full of loving and compassionate people,” she says.
Clemens says he and Brenda couldn’t be prouder of the way Anna has grown up and succeeded in school.
Travis’ death ended Clemens’ plan for his son to take over the shop. At the moment, no one is standing in the wings. Who will take over, if anyone, is constantly on his mind. But for now, he says, coming into the shop every morning gives his life purpose.
“If I didn’t have this in front of me, I’d probably die in a short period of time,” he says. “I’d get drunk every day. I’d get fat and die.”
