Not long after Al Grow was named commander of a new, Nashua-based chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart in late 2007, he began thinking of ways to reach out to area recipients of the award, especially the younger ones.

One day, about a year later, Grow and fellow Vietnam veteran Jerry Dumont – both Marines, both combat-wounded veterans – were tossing around ideas after a chapter meeting. At some point, motorcycles entered the conversation; both are riders.

They talked with some other guys who had joined Chapter 804, which is the second in New Hampshire – Manchester was first – and is named after World War II veteran Byron Buckingham, a longtime Nashua veterans advocate.

The next thing they knew, Dumont and Grow were running back and forth from the phone to the computer to the mailbox, fielding inquiries from Purple Heart recipients down the street and across the nation.

Their idea – to form an association of military veterans who have in common a Purple Heart and a love of motorcycle riding – had caught on like a California wildfire.

Indeed, within weeks, Purple Heart recipients from noncommissioned officers to high-ranking Vietnam-era Special Forces brass were joining the Purple Heart Riders, in which camaraderie and brotherhood outrank membership numbers every day of the week.

Their back patch – the logos you see on the back of riders’ jackets – is the blue-and-gold Purple Heart medal, a handsome and solemn symbol that, Grow says, has drawn more than one thumbs-up from even the Hells Angels.

“We thought we’d give it a shot,” Grow said this week. “It just took off.”

A lot of that success can be credited to what corporate types would call marketing – in this case, the Web site (www.purpleheartriders.us) that Dumont created early in the game.

“I wanted to do it fast and make it easy and neat, keep it simple,” Dumont said. “Some of these (sites) I go on are overwhelming; there’s too much. I don’t like all those bells and whistles. You don’t have to have dancing doodads all over the place.”

That’s especially so now, as every day, he spends a good chunk of time on not only the Purple Heart Riders site, but also on Chapter 804’s www.moph804.org site, which he also developed and maintains.

As they progressed, the men focused on making the Purple Heart Riders a manageable, tightly knit fellowship of kindred spirits rather than a huge, all-inclusive throng of paramilitary people sometimes twice or thrice removed from an actual Purple Heart recipient.

To that end, one of their first rules states that only Purple Heart recipients are eligible for membership.

“We found that many organizations are having issues by (including) too many types of associate members,” Dumont said. “We agreed at the start that only Purple Heart recipients – combat-wounded veterans – can be members. It’s much easier for everyone.”

Age and gender aren’t factors, nor is a wounded veteran’s ability to ride a motorcycle.

“As long as they received the Purple Heart, that’s all that matters,” Grow added, saying he has received a substantial number of inquires from amputees and recipients who were otherwise disabled at war.

Grow said one kid who wants to join lost a leg in Iraq, but still rides, thanks to his prosthesis and a rare, but nevertheless attainable, automatic-transmission bike.

Still, Purple Heart recipients whose riding days are over can still find plenty of ways to contribute to the association, Grow said.

“I’ve had double amputees (call) who want to be part of this,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Of course you can (join), you could be on the board, a representative, be an officer.’

“The main thing is that they’ve been there,” he said of being wounded in battle. “… They understand.”

Just in time for this past Veterans Day, Purple Heart Riders was accepted for membership into the National Coalition of Viet Nam and Gulf War Veterans (www.veterans-coalition.org), a process that Dumont called “very long, but very worthwhile.”

“We’re one of the few veterans motorcycle associations that are members of this coalition,” he added.

These days, Grow still mounts his 8-year-old Harley Heritage as often as possible, although he has lost some riding time to a series of surgeries.

Recurring issues with his legs, meanwhile, have pretty much sidelined Dumont.

But with weeks to go until the (legitimate) riding season and the time spent in building the association, bikes are on the back burner anyway.

Grow says founders of other organizations have asked him if members, as many clubs require, need a sponsor or have to serve a probation period.

“I tell them no way,” he said. “They did all that when they got wounded.’”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 31, or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.