Biker Bob Hofmeister rode his Hog until he was 89

Robert Hofmeister of Bloomington was a wizard with metal, and he turned that skill to his passion for Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Hofmeister, who owned a Harley dealership in Faribault, Minn., and would hit the road on his own bike until he was 89, died of cancer on Aug. 12 at his home in Bloomington.

He was 91.

He bought his first bike -- just a pile of parts -- in the late 1930s. He put it together and got it running.

By the 1940s, he was racing motorcycles, sometimes at the Minnesota State Fair. In the early 1970s, he gave up racing at the bidding of his wife, Dorothy, of Bloomington.

"To him, motorcycling was the fountain of youth," she said.

He rode his bike in all states except Hawaii, and also rode in every Canadian province. He sometimes toured with his wife on the back of his bike or in a sidecar, but mostly with fellow motorcyclists.

In 1946, he founded Milhoff Steel out of his basement in St. Paul, moving into a shop in Bloomington a year later.

He fabricated and welded broken equipment and manufactured vises and custom-ordered items, such as swing sets and milk bottle carriers.

Hubert (Hub) Johnson of Bloomington met him as a customer in 1948 and became his friend.

"That man was a genius," with metal, creating equipment for industry, snow making machines for Twin Cities ski slopes. He made tricky repairs of heavy machinery that others would not attempt, said Johnson.

After the city of Bloomington forced Milhoff Steel to move, to build a new City Hall in the mid-1980s, Brett Quinnell took over the business, now Milhoff Machine and Welding in Burnsville.

In 2002, his daughter, Ann Hofmeister Kellis of Faribault took over operation of the Harley dealership, but he continued to go to work until recently.

Another daughter, Ruth Ann Kelley, of Simi Valley, Calif., said he had an analytic mind, was "clean living," and "always thought of others."

"He had a passion for service to others," she said.

His first wife, Audrey, from whom he was divorced, died in 1997.

In addition to Dorothy, his wife of 41 years, and his daughters, he is survived by his other daughters, Carole Walter of Tucson, Ariz., Kathy Prokosch of Morgan, Minn., Sue Woodruff of Bloomington, Dawn Powell of Cedar Hill, Texas; sons Bill Hofmeister of Bloomington, Robert Sebastian of Bloomington, Tom Sebastian of Merit Island, Fla.; his sister, Ruth Hofmeister of Washington, D.C.; 22 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.