Mel Chancey

My dad forged his brother's birth certificate when he was 16, Sean, and got in the Korean War.

Wow.

At 16.

Then he ran a platoon by the time he was 18 because he didn't have a great home life.

His dad was a pretty rough guy with him, so he wanted to get away.

So he was in the Korean War.

My uncles were in Vietnam.

All my boy cousins were in Afghanistan and Desert Storm.

You know, I was the only boy out of the family that didn't join the military.

I went in the motorcycle world, right?

So I knew that military structure and I seen it here now.

You know, when we were out, everybody had a job to do when we were in the public, especially when we were in bars with other motorcycle clubs.

A lot of clubs were in the city of Chicago, the Outlaws, these DC Eagles, you know, five, six prominent clubs.

So we'd be out and they'd be in the same bars as we were and we'd

Everything with us was security to make sure we were all safe in case something jumped off.

Always had a gun on me.

Always had a ball-peen hammer in my back pocket, a knife attached to my belt, wore some sap gloves.

I had some deer skin gloves, and we brought them to this tailor and the shoe leather guy, and he put the lead pellets in there.

had the sap gloves on all the time and just you know constantly ready just to make sure that our brothers were all good when we were out and about because in that world you have to be seen you know you can't have a you're not going to be some prominent motorcycle club and you guys never leave the clubhouse that world who's out and about and running around and you know the dominant ones you know so that structure to me that i seen with them was you know something that i really really enjoyed and liked to see you know when they made me the sergeant of arms that was a real

big honor for me at that young age, you know, 21 years old and, you know, now I'm probably 225 pounds and them guys love that I trained.