I just registered for this site. I lived a few blocks away from the Huerkamps. I remember Dickie as a loner. He rode his bike around the neighborhood alone, and we never saw him playing with friends. One might consider him a Special Needs child. My Mother always thought he was in a abusive family. My gut feeling is someone in the family knows what happened. I pray it is solved some day.
Welcome to Websleuths and to this thread about Dickie Huerkamp. It is good to have someone posting here who actually knew him and the community in which he lived.
Your having seen him often riding his bicycle explains why he rode off on a bicycle just prior to going missing. It was obviously his usual way of traveling. The fact that he had to borrow his sisters bike (according to newspaper accounts) probably meant that his own bike had a flat tire or was in some way mechanically impaired. He was certainly persistent in his efforts to go hunting with his friends.
If, in fact, he was a "special needs child", it might have been because he was emotionally disabled to some extent. His mother's comments about him crying when he overslept and missed the car ride with the other boys has been commented on, as well as her having given him "a licking" for arriving home late the night before. He may have been somewhat underdeveloped/delayed behaviorly as well as physically, since he was 15 years old, yet her comments sound like she is describing a much younger child.
While investigators should definitely pursue the possibility of Dickie coming to harm from a family member, the family's story about him preparing for hunting, making a lunch, borrowing a bicycle from his sister, etc. tends to have been somewhat verified by the other boys he wanted to hunt with.
There were, however, some inconsistencies and open questions which need to be checked into and resolved.