Kansas Legionnaire Michael Haas, who passed away on this year’s Legacy Run, was escorted from Iowa to his home by fellow Riders from multiple states.
When Kansas American Legion Rider Michael Haas passed away along this year’s Legacy Run on Day 3 in Iowa, his fellow participants vowed to honor him by finishing the ride and dedicating its success to him.
They more than accomplished that, making their way to Louisville, Ky., and bringing with them more than $1 million for The American Legion Veterans & Children Foundation.
But his fellow Legion Riders didn’t stop there in honoring Haas, a member of Post 128 in Sterling and ALR Chapter 68 in Hutchinson Chapter 68. Instead, they ensured Haas received the proper escort when he was brought home to Kansas.
After Haas passed away, his wife Terri and their daughter, Jenna Schroeder, traveled from Bentley, Kan., to Des Moines, Iowa, to work with a local funeral home on arrangements to have Michael cremated before the pair returned home. But when word got around that Haas’s cremains possibly were going home via a courier service, the wheels were put in motion to change that.
“His fellow volunteer firefighters in Bentley said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen. We’re going to go get him,’” said fellow Kansas Legion Rider Chris Krueger. “Then Terri was in touch with us and told us that was going to happen. And that’s how the escort came about.”
Krueger, who called Haas his best friend, serves as chairman of the Kansas State Legacy Run Committee, Sons of The American Legion Detachment of Kansas adjutant and state ALR Sons of The American Legion liaison. He began reaching out to other Kansas Legion Riders, as well as to his counterparts in the Des Moines area.
One of those was Doug Sargent, a member of American Legion Post 37 in Ames and the post’s ALR director. Sargent had met Haas and Krueger for the first time when he and two other Iowa Legion Riders took part in the 2022 Legacy Run.
“The three of us got put into J Flight, which was with Mike and Chris,” Sargent said. “(Haas) was the first one that came up to us and said, ‘Hey, where are you guys from, how ya doing?’ Over the course of time we’d catch him at the rides and through Facebook and such.”
Krueger put Sargent in contact with the Bentley (Kan.) Fire Department, where Haas previously had worked. “And then it just kind of spun up from there,” Sargent said. “I touched base with the funeral home to make sure we had law enforcement to get us out to the highway and got the word out to all the people we could here in the state.
On Sept. 3, a small group of Kansas Legion Riders headed to Des Moines, and the next morning they joined dozens of Iowa Legion Riders and Bentley firefighters at the Hamilton Funeral Home to transfer Haas’s remains into a vehicle that would be escorted all the way back to Bentley.
Once the escort approached the Missouri state line, Riders from state’s ALR Chapters 58 in Smithville and Chapter 21 in Independence met the escort and took over the lead from there. Kansas’s Legion Riders then did the same in North Kansas City, Mo. By the end of the escort, there were around 30 motorcycles taking Mike into Bentley; as they approached his home, they set up a missing man formation, leaving open the lead spot on the left side of the escort.
The escort – which included Legion Riders from Maryland, Oklahoma and Indiana as well – finished up in Bentley at the Haas home, where members of the Bentley Volunteer Fire Department presented the ashes and a folded U.S. flag to Terri and Schroeder.
“I wouldn’t say she was overcome with emotion. She was ready for it,” Krueger said of Terri. “This woman has got strength, and it’s all based on her faith in God and her relationship with Jesus. You can see it in every (Facebook) post she makes.”
And along the route, Haas was never alone. Krueger said Maryland American Legion Rider Michael Laws – a former road guard on the Legacy Run who had to miss this year’s ride because of a death in the family but took part in Haas’s escort – came up with the idea to provide an honor guard that would stay with the vehicle carrying Haas’s cremains on the road and during gas stops. The honor guard consisted of Bob Deister and Terry Shadel from ALR Chapter 68 in Hutchinson, David Heck from Chapter 19 in Gardiner, Kan., and Dennis McDonough from ALR Chapter 136 in Mulvane, Kan.
Mike Harris and his wife, Sarah, from Chapter 1340 in Oklahoma City, Okla., took Heck’s place late in the ride. Four other Riders would serve as backups if any of the honor guard had to briefly leave their post.
And Heck’s son, Tim, had come to Krueger following the 2025 Kansas Legacy Run and asked to learn how to play taps. Krueger, who had been a member of a drum and bugle corps and played trumpet, said that Tim had played taps on the Kansas Legacy Run’s wreath-laying stops and asked to do the same for the Haas escort. He did.
“Everybody that knew Mike Haas was close to him.” Krueger said. “He was just that kind of guy.”
And he was a fellow Legion Rider. “We needed to do this,” Sargent said. “It just felt like the right thing to do for someone who needed escorted home. It’s the thing to do, and that’s what we do.”
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