Bikers to ride to help family

But he was not a biker. Nor was he a friend of the Wishers. Which is why his wife Teresa Morgenstern, 37, was so powerfully moved when Wayne and Jennifer Wisher decided to dedicate the proceeds from their second annual Bikers for Brothers charitable rally to his family.

"I was incredibly grateful," she said. "Their generosity and their spirit has just been a real help through this. They didn't even know me."

The first Bikers for Brothers Rally was held last year to raise money for the family of a friend who was killed in a plane crash. But this year's beneficiaries, the Morgensterns, had no such close ties to the organizers. They were just a family who had suffered a hard loss.

"When we hear about Brett, we decided that we would dedicate it this year to him," said Wayne Wisher, 39, a Naples resident who works for Boran, Craig, Barber Homes and helped put the fund-raiser together.

Last year's event drew about 300 people, most of them bikers, and raised about $8,000 for the family. In this year's poker run, bikers will drive to five places to get playing cards. The biker with the best poker hand at the end wins a prize of $500, donated by BCB Homes.

For Teresa Morgenstern, it will be a welcome gift. She has two young children, Emma, 4, and Jared, 1, as well as a house that she is working hard to keep.

"This is the house we helped design and build," she said. "Everything in our lives has been turned upside down and I needed something to be stable."

Teresa met Brett at work, when he was hired in the data and computer division of International Automated Energy Systems Inc. in Naples. She was a receptionist who introduced him around. "He came up to my desk with his sunglasses on, plopped his car keys on my desk and asked me how my day was going," she said.

They hit it off, fell in love and married in 1994. They left the company, moved to other jobs; Teresa worked for the Naples Daily News and Bonita Banner for a bit. Now she is a writer and public relations specialist with Wordplay inc., her own company. Brett rose to become a senior software engineer for the Naples company MICROS Fidelio.

They bought a home in Naples. He enjoyed putting up Christmas lights on the holidays and playing racquetball. They had a daughter, then a son.

But then the illness struck. Last year, after suffering a debilitating pain in his right leg, Brett went to a doctor. Then another. And another.

He was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma. A tumor was tangled up with nerves at the end of his spinal cord. He had one operation. Then the chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed.

The odds of recovering from Ewing's Sarcoma are not good. But the family treated it like war.

"We went into this saying we were going to get him into remission," Teresa said.

For a while, they did well. Brett rarely threw up and he was energetic in the hospital, working on his laptop while waiting for exams and medical procedures.

"He never complained," Teresa said.

They even took a trip to Las Vegas. He felt very sick there. They knew it was a relapse, Teresa said. Brett passed away on Aug. 27, four days before his young son Jared turned one.

The entire family plans to be at the biker fund-raiser. Brett "loved Harleys," Teresa said. "He thought they were beautiful bikes. But at that point in our lives he wasn't going to get one. He thought, maybe somewhere down the road."

The Bikers for Brothers rally will begin at 10 a.m. on Nov. 23 at Hickey's Pub in Naples, at the corner of Immokalee Road and Airport Pulling Road. The last bike out will be at noon. For more information, contact Jennifer or Wayne Wisher at 239-348-7402

(Contact Staff Writer Abhi Raghunathan at 213-6042 or araghunathan@naplesnews.com )