Page 38 - BusinessWest February 17, 2025

John Delaney, Director
Ride to Remember
He Started a
Bicycle Trek That
Honors the Fallen
and Impacts the
Living
JBy Joseph Bednar [email protected]
ohn Delaney remembers, in vivid detail, the day his colleague, Springfield Police Officer Kevin Ambrose, died.
It was June 4, 2012, and Delaney was having lunch with his wife when his phone
started blowing up. Ambrose had been shot in the line of duty, responding to a domestic disturbance. “I raced to Baystate Medical Center and went into the ER, and when they saw me coming in, they
directed me right to the room where a team of doctors and nurses were working on him,” Delaney recalled. “When I got in the room, Kevin was lying there. And within 30 seconds to a minute, the doctor pronounced him dead. It was kind of tough to take.”
“I’m riding along guys that
I’d worked with for years, state troopers, police officers from around Western Massachusetts, and they’re all crying, strong guys that really show no emotion while they’re working, but they showed emotion that day.”
Photo by Bob Zemba, Simple Truth Imaging DM20 FEBRUARY 17, 2025
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He also recalled listening to dispatch from the hospital parking lot, to all the 911 calls still pouring in. “The world didn’t stop, and the police officers couldn’t stop just because they just lost one of their own.”
Delaney was tasked with planning Ambrose’s funeral — attended by some 5,000 police officers
— and a celebration of life afterward, but he and some colleagues wanted to do something more to commemorate their friend. The death later that summer of Westfield Police Officer Jose Torres, who was struck by a truck in the line of duty, got them thinking about a broader event to honor fallen officers. “My friends and I were bike riders, so we said, ‘why not do a bike ride in their honor?’”
They planned a route from Springfield to Boston and figured maybe 50 people would participate, but about 170 signed up, and the Boston Police Department helped out by closing off the route to cars from Boylston Street to the State House.
“I’m riding along guys that I’d worked with for years, state troopers, police officers from around Western Massachusetts, and they’re all crying, strong guys that really show no emotion while they’re working, but they showed emotion that day,” Delaney recalled.
The initial organizers — Delaney, Officers Mike Goggin and Eddie Vanzant, and Gary Kennedy,