Rose students come together for annual “Bikes for Tykes” build

Saturday December 15, marked the ninth annual Bike-for-Tykes, an event sponsored by the Terre Haute Exchange Club, with donations from the Wabash Valley region. Bikes-for-Tykes is a community service project for needy children in which hundreds of bikes are purchased and assembled for underprivileged children. Approximately 300 Rose-Hulman students, representing the Greek community and many other organizations, came out to assist in the assembly of the bikes.

This year’s event included the assembly of 500 bikes, a step up from nine years ago when 125 bikes were assembled, even with “nature’s curve ball,” of about an inch of snow with ice, as described by Dale Long, Director of News Services. The entire process began at 8 a.m. with an announcement, all with the hope of having every bike assembled, inspected, and ready for delivery by 11:30.

“Nature’s curveball” came into play at the very beginning with the unloading of boxes in the snow and on the ice. The assembly was at a fired pace with approximately 40 assembly tables of four to five students working on a given model of bicycle and continuing to go from there. The bikes that were built varied in size and model, ranging from tricycles to training wheels and roadsters to mountain bikes.

Chief Master Sergeant Enner said “everybody seems to enjoy it, every year we get more and more students. It wouldn’t work without their participation.”

Students seemed to enjoy themselves more and more as the day went on, including the testing involved in the delivery process. One such student was Chad Welty, a freshman mechanical engineer, who worked on bike assembly and said he felt “that this was a great experience; it is nice to be able to work on a project that has so many students taking part in a process to give so much back.”



These 500 bikes were distributed amongst various civil organizations including the Salvation Army, a recipient of 200 bikes, church organizations, and community outreach programs. The distribution also took place on campus from 12-4 with multitudes of bikes arranged for easy pick up by the needy families. The distribution was then completed through various methods. The bikes were loaded onto trailers, trucks, and the hanger of Facilities for the distribution process. During the distribution process, volunteers from the community came out to assist the various families and the Rose-Hulman volunteers in the loading of the bikes. Safety was of concern also, seeing how all bikes distributed also came with a helmet for protection. Dr. Jakubowski put the event in a nutshell, “It’s really neat to be able to give back to the community in such a way and also build such a large number of bikes in such a short matter of time.”

This event would not be possible if the organizations involved not had received donations in extent of $20,000. Donations also came in forms other than monetary, including the delivery of the bicycles from Olney, Illinois by Morris Trucking. A fundraiser was also held on the 21st of November that helped raise some money.