BRANDON — It was Presidents Day weekend 2003, and on a whim, Marquis and Danna Wheeler hopped on his motorcycle for an overnight trip to Fort Myers.
When they awoke in the morning, a cold front had moved in, meaning it would be a chilly ride back to their Brandon home. So Mrs. Wheeler posed a question.
"Doesn't it get warmer the farther south you go?"
It was a rhetorical question, but there was an answer: Key West.
"The next thing you know we're at Sloppy Joe's enjoying a margarita," said Marquis Wheeler, 52.
The Wheelers traveled the country by motorcycle. They toured the Carolinas and Tennessee, through the Smoky Mountains and up to Pennsylvania. They rode the Blue Ridge Parkway and through the mountains out West.
"We never scheduled anything," Marquis Wheeler said. "We always had an idea of a destination. Our philosophy was we had X amount of time and X amount of money."
Their time together ended last week. Mrs. Wheeler died Thursday at age 48 following a battle with lymphoma.
In her late 20s, Mrs. Wheeler joined the Air Force. She served for a few years and was the crew chief on a B-52 bomber. Her life as an adventurer continued when she got married in 1994.
The couple hiked, camped and white-water rafted, fulfilling Mrs. Wheeler's love for the outdoors. An avid gardener, she reveled in their yard-of-the-month awards.
Mrs. Wheeler started out as a passenger on her husband's motorcycle on trips to all corners of the United States.
"She was my little GPS," her husband said. "She always kept me on the right road. She just basically called out the shots as we went."
Mrs. Wheeler took lots of pictures and shot video along the way. She captured the mountain ranges, the snow caps and the smiles.
A couple of years ago, Mrs. Wheeler got her motorcycle license and her own bike, a 900cc Kawasaki Vulcan. The Wheelers took trips around the state, to locations ranging from Daytona Beach for motorcycle rallies to DeLand for breakfast. Both graphic artists, they made the most of time away from work.
Her favorite tour was through Colorado and New Mexico. It included a climb to the top of Mount Evans, which has the country's highest paved road at more that 14,000 feet.
Before she became ill this spring, Mrs. Wheeler and her husband planned to ride through Glacier National Park in Montana. He's not sure when, but he'll still get there.
"I am going to do that as a tribute to her," he said. "I will end up having to make that trip by myself, but that's okay, because as far as I'm concerned she's still with me."
Kevin Smetana can be reached at ksmetana@sptimes.com or (813) 661-2439.
.Biography
Danna Wheeler
Born: Feb. 27, 1961.
Died: Nov. 19, 2009.
Survivors: Husband, Marquis; parents, Henry and Ruth Pananganan; stepdaughter, Jennifer; brother, Norman and his wife Sheireen; and two grandchildren.
Memorial service: 2 p.m. Saturday at Stowers Funeral Home, 401 W Brandon Blvd., Brandon.
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