A message to his fellow bikers: Wear a helmet
Jun. 10—Keith Tuttle has a message for the thousands of motorcyclists arriving in New Hampshire for this 100th anniversary of Bike Week: Wear a helmet.
"Do what you can to save your life," he says. "Don't put your family through what mine went through."
Four years ago, Tuttle was in a motorcycle crash that nearly killed him — and that upended his family's life forever. He wasn't wearing his helmet that day, and when his bike collided with a truck, he went airborne.
Tuttle suffered a traumatic brain injury that has left him disabled, with ongoing physical and mental health challenges.
Now the Franklin man has made it his life's mission to warn others. When he sees riders who aren't wearing helmets, he approaches them, takes off his cap and taps his shaved head to reveal the long circular scar carved along half of his skull.
"You don't want to do this," he tells them.
"Think about the people that you love. Put a helmet on."
At the time of the crash, Tuttle's wife, Jenny, was working as a case manager for traumatic brain injury patients at Lakes Region Community Services.
But nothing prepared her for the true impact of such an injury on the family, she said.
"The whole time, I thought I had all the answers for families," she said. "I knew nothing."
Tuttle, 52, has no memory of the April 11, 2019, crash.
He was riding his Yamaha V Star 1100 to meet Jenny in Tilton after work to take her for a ride. He often wore a helmet but that day did not.
The last thing he remembers is stopping at an intersection on Central Street.
Jenny Tuttle got tied up at work that evening and was running late for their rendezvous. When Keith wasn't at their meeting spot, she continued on into Franklin, leaving Keith a message that she was on her way home.
"When I got to Franklin, traffic was just stopped," she said. "An ambulance whizzed by, going the other way."
She called Keith again to tell him she would be even later because of an accident, but he didn't pick up.
When she got close to home, she saw the crumpled motorcycle on the ground. "I almost crashed into oncoming traffic," she said.
That moment, her phone rang; "I think Keith's been in an accident," her son-in-law told her.
Then everything began happening in slow motion, Jenny said.
What happened to the person on the bike, she screamed to a police officer at the scene. The officer told her Keith had been taken to Concord Hospital, but he reassured her that he would be OK.
"I knew better," she said. "Just seeing the bike, and the ambulance whizzing by like that."
'A bad feeling'
Jenny had given up riding herself that year and sold her motorcycle. "I just had a bad feeling," she said. "That whole year, I felt like something bad was coming."
She had reluctantly agreed to put aside her fears and ride with Keith that spring evening. Now her premonition had proven true.
At the hospital, Jenny was directed to a private waiting room, where members of her family were gathered — their five kids and her mother.
Keith was lying motionless in a room, getting prepped for emergency surgery. "He just looked like he was sleeping," she said.
When the medical staff showed her the scans of her husband's fractured skull, "You could read the dread on all the nurses," she said. "You could read the horror. They were fearful, which made me scared."
Say anything you want to say to him now, the nurses urged her.
At the memory, her eyes fill with tears.
Surgeons removed a portion of Keith's skull to operate, freezing it until it could be reinserted in his head. He was put in a medically induced coma, placed on a breathing tube.
Two weeks after the crash, he was transferred to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, where he remained for a month.
He remembers nothing from his time in the hospital. "Just black," he said. "No pretty light. No people waiting. It was black.
"But it makes sense because they said that I refused to die."
The long scar on his shaved head hints at the damage.
"I call myself Humpty Dumpty," he said.
A changed life
The past four years have been filled with ups and downs, Jenny Tuttle said. There were hopeful days, when it seemed Keith would make a full recovery. But there were crushing days, when he fell into "a downward spiral," she said.
He was often anxious and agitated. His voice has changed.
So has his personality, Jenny said. "He used to be the one that we all leaned on," she said. "He was the rational one ... the one the kids would always go to for their small problems.
"And you can't now."
Keith, who used to work in the purchasing department at Merrimack County Nursing Home, in charge of the facility's warehouse, had to retire on disability.
Jenny works second shift in a factory so she can be with Keith during the day. Two of their daughters have moved into the same apartment complex in Franklin so they can help take care of Keith while Jenny is at work.
The staff at Lakes Region Community Services has helped them navigate Medicaid insurance and provided other resources.
And their three cats — Dexter, Spencer and Kodiak — and their dog Ziggy, a 2-year-old King Charles Cavalier/poodle mix, give them comfort and unconditional love, as pets will do.
Keith has had to learn how to speak again, walk again, even eat again.
Once a man who prided himself on his analytical abilities, he's lost the memories from whole portions of his life.
Sometimes a word or sound can trigger sparks of memory. "I call it mystic fog memories," Keith said. "I wish I could remember more of my life, and I just can't.
"But I'm here, and that's all that matters."
Caution to the wind
Last year, 32 people died in motorcycle crashes in New Hampshire. Twenty-two of them were not wearing helmets, according to data from the Department of Safety.
In 2021, 19 of the 26 people killed in motorcycle crashes were not wearing helmets.
Of the eight riders killed in bike crashes so far this year, half were not wearing helmets.
Capt. Christopher Vetter, commander of the state police Office of Highway Safety, said Tuttle's message is similar to the public safety messages DOS puts out about the importance of wearing a seatbelt and a motorcycle helmet.
"But coming from him and his family, and the impact that that has had on him and his family, it is so much more powerful and compelling," he said.
"It's no longer what could happen; it's what did happen," Vetter said.
Long road back
Doctors tell Tuttle the left half of his brain is learning to make up for what was lost in the right half. With physical, occupational and speech therapy, he's made great gains over the past four years, his wife said.
They get by, day to day, they said.
But life is changed forever.
"It's hard to plan things," Jenny said. "Every day you wake up, you just don't know how it's going to go."
"He could wake up super energetic and happy and take on a lot of different things at once," she said. "And then the next minute he's crying, listening to sad music.
"It's like a cycle that just keeps spinning," she said. "When the wheel spins, you don't know where it's going to stop."
Now Jenny has to be the strong one. "I miss having a partner," she said. "He was the one I leaned on all the time too. And that's just not how it is anymore."
Keith got rid of all his bike stuff. Even the sound of a motorcycle bothers him now.
He stopped watching the news: "I just couldn't deal with it anymore."
And he's become "a very bad backseat driver," his wife said, with a patient grin.
Keith said he misses going to work. He was good at his job and respected by his co-workers. "All I want to do is go back to work," he said. "Every day.
"This doesn't feel right to me. But I understand. I do," he said.
"I'm not what I was. I am what I am."
The many victims
New Hampshire does not have a mandatory motorcycle helmet law. Neighboring Massachusetts does.
Years back, when Capt. Vetter was patrolling the highways as a state trooper, he remembers seeing bikers at the rest areas at the state line pull off their helmets before heading north on I-93 and I-95. "It happened all the time," he said.
Keith Tuttle's story is a painful example that making that choice is not "victimless," Vetter said.
"You're so vulnerable on a motorcycle," he said. "It surprises me that people won't take as many precautions as they can to protect themselves should they be involved in a crash."
Keith said he understands why some bikers choose not to wear helmets. He remembers the feeling of freedom, the unrestricted visibility, and yes, the thrill of taking a risk.
But it's not worth it, he wants people to know.
"You come back, you see the damage you've caused, the trauma it caused," he said. "And I slept through the whole thing.
"It's not the person that has the accident, it's the people that you love. That's what hurts."
"They had to deal with the trauma," he said. "And that is not something that anyone's family should ever have to endure."
