my bet is that it is not the wheel bearing at all....
i'm puttin my cashish on the front brake pads being worn out....  

Bad wheel bearings would growl all the time I would think. Here is the deal on damage, whenever we have to remove a bearing by driving through the balls or rollers, we consider it "junk" as the possibility of denting a race or fracturing a ball/roller is great and very hard to detect as they cannot be disassembled. To remove the bearings you move the spacer slightly to the side and using a long punch drive one side bearing out by the inner race (through the bearing). The spacer can be removed but you still cannot get to the outer race of the other side, so it gets driven by the inner race through the bearings also. When reinstalling, you drive them in place by the outer race so no damage is done. Use a correct size socket and a brass or shot hammer to prevent damage to the socket, unless you have some bearing  drivers tools at hand.  They are generally considered a non-servicable item. They are shielded both sides and factory lubed. If you could remove them w/o driving through the bearings, that doesn't prevent one from carefully lifting the shield out, throughly cleaning out the old grease, carefully checking the bearing for loosness (not more than 0.004" axially or radially) and wear. If OK, then relubing it and reinstalling the shield.  For the most part the bearings are pretty standard and not expensive if you take the old bearing to a bearing supply house rather than use Suzuki part # ones. Bearings are very standarized world wide and brand names are easily available. Now if you start looking for ATV drive axle or those kinds of bearings be prepared, even the bearing supply store gets a big handful of $ for those.  Max

I can't feel any play just a little grind when I push down on the front

And at 10 years old and 15k miles it's likely due for $20 worth of bearings

Fairly sure as it's a rolling grind and only there when I brake and push down on the front end. I'll pull it apart in a couple of hours and have a look see.

Well, jacked it up, spun the tire all seems good - no run out on the rotor, pulled the front brake and the wheel seems mighty smooth to me - not a bit of play and zero noise - may be just the pads - the old ones were metalic I believe, dry as could be on the back (except for a little rust) and squealed quite a lot - so if the slight grind was there couldn't have heard it - I'll hang on a bit and see if these pads bed in a bit more and this goes away.

Rotor looks good - run my finger nail across it I can't feel any groves and it mics @ .181 - normal looks to be .17-.19 service limit of .16 -  had it out this afternoon for quite awhile and gave the front brakes a hard time - all works fine- just a little more grind when I add some down pressure than I'd expect - better half tells me I'm just looking for a reason to work on it - I did change the oil out to 20w-50 v-twin mobil1 and this time the filter - dang filter had 8-7-98 20w-50 castrol written on in with a sharpie - dang i hope the filter hand't been in there that long! Man about 3 months is more like it - 7 years!!!