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For Don and Dale Ehlerding, the garage on their family's dairy farm near Decatur was where it all started.
"I was the local lawnmower and motor scooter repair guy for the kids and farmers who lived near us," says Don Ehlerding, founder and partner at Ehlerding Motorsports. "We lived on the farm, and when I was old enough my dad and I went to Fort Wayne to buy a motorcycle. We couldn't get waited on, so we returned home and wrote to a motorcycle distributor to find out where their local dealer was. To make a long story short, we became the local dealer."
The year was 1965, and Don was just 15 years old - old enough to run the dealership with help from his parents, since he was still in school.
"After graduation 1 went to college, but managing the dealership and taking college classes was too much," Don says. "One or the other had to become full time, so I dedicated myself to Ehlerding Motorsports."
That dedication, and the ongoing involvement of his family, resulted in the growth of Ehlerding Motorsports, which is now centralized in a 40,000 squarefoot building in Fort Wayne.
"This business has long been a family operation, starting with Dad's work as the neighborhood repairman," Don says. "My brother Dale joined the company when he graduated from high school, and today he is a partner in the business. Another brother, Darrel, joined us in the office, and at one point, my sister Alice was our operations manager, before she passed away from cancer."
Friends of the Ehlerdings have also...