05/14/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/18oyFxecCp/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Our brother died of a heart attack at fifty eight. His will said his Rottweiler had to choose the next owner from fifteen of us in folding chairs. The dog walked past every one of us and out to the parking lot.
I'm Cody Hammill. I'm fifty two. Vice president of the Iron Saints Motorcycle Club, Memphis chapter. The brother who died was Hollis Lee Briggs. He was our chapter president for eleven years. He had been a member for twenty three. He had been my best friend for sixteen.
Hollis collapsed in the back of his shop on a Tuesday morning in June of last year. Massive heart attack. He was sixty days short of his fifty ninth birthday. His Rottweiler Diesel had been lying on his bed about six feet away. Diesel did not bark. He walked to where Hollis was on the floor and laid down beside him. He stayed there for about three hours, until our shop foreman Ezra came back from a parts run and called everyone.
Hollis's funeral was the following Friday. Forty one bikers attended.
His attorney Lonnie Trout drove out to our clubhouse the next Saturday with the will. He sat down at our long oak table. He read it to fifteen of us. The will had three instructions. Burn his vest. Scatter his ashes on a particular stretch of Highway 64 between Bolivar and Selmer. And let his eight year old Rottweiler Diesel choose his next owner from among the fifteen full patch members of the Memphis chapter.
The will said: Set up fifteen folding chairs in a circle in the meeting room. Sit in the chairs. Bring Diesel into the middle. Whichever brother Diesel goes to and lays down beside is the brother who will be his new person.
The will also said: If by some chance no one is chosen, figure it out among yourselves. Do not abandon him. He is family.
We voted unanimously to honor every word.
We burned Hollis's vest at sunrise the next morning. We poured out a Pabst Blue Ribbon on the ashes. We rode out the following weekend, twenty three of us, and scattered Hollis on the shoulder of Highway 64. Boom carried the urn riding pillion behind me at thirty five miles an hour for half a mile. The wind took Hollis the rest of the way.
The following Saturday at 2 p.m., we set up fifteen folding chairs in a circle in our meeting room. Hollis's seat at the head of the rotation was left empty. We sat down around the empty chair. Our prospect Robby walked Diesel into the opening. He unclipped the leash. He stepped back outside the circle.
Diesel walked clockwise around the inside of the circle. He stopped in front of every brother in order. He sniffed each of us for between three and seven seconds. He completed one full circle.
He stopped in front of the empty chair where Hollis had always sat. He sniffed the seat. He sat down on the floor in front of it. He looked up at the empty chair. His tail did not wag.
He stood up.
He walked in a straight line between two chairs, out of the circle, out of the meeting room, down the back hallway, through the open door of the garage, across the garage floor, out the open garage door, across the gravel lot, and to the back of the lot, to the chain link fence where Hollis's 2003 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail Classic had been parked since the day he died, untouched.
He looked up at the dog seat Hollis had built him in 2017. He gathered himself. He jumped. It took him three tries. He made it on the third.
He laid down on the seat.
What we voted unanimously to do that afternoon, the wooden plaque our brother Tex carved out of black walnut from Hollis's shop floor that week, and the conversation I had two weeks later with Hollis's 81 year old attorney Lonnie Trout about a clause Hollis had added to his will exactly three months before he died, is the part of this story I cannot tell out loud yet without my voice catching.
👉 If you want to read the rest of what happened, the will Lonnie Trout read to us at our oak table, the Saturday afternoon Diesel walked past every one of fifteen brothers, the wooden plaque on our back fence, the conversation Hollis had with Lonnie in March of last year three months before he passed, and the way Diesel lives with all fifteen of us now, I've shared the full story in the first comment below.
