HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Harley or Honda? Leather or polyester? Members of Motor Maids Inc., North America’s oldest women’s motorcycling club, have differing opinions about bikes and apparel. But when they twist their throttles, they all know what they’re after.
“Freedom,” said Gloria Tramontin Struck, 80.
Mrs. Struck, from Clifton, N.J., was among 210 Motor Maids attending the club’s annual convention, which ended yesterday in Hagerstown.
She drove her teal Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic, accompanied by daughter Lori DeSilva on a black Harley Electra Glide Classic.
Those are big bikes, built for touring by riders such as Mrs. Struck, who sometimes goes 20,000 miles a year.
As the club’s longest-enrolled member still riding, she plans to attend next month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, where the Motor Maids will be inducted into the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame.
The club’s members, numbering about 775, promote women’s motorcycling by appearing at events and parades in dress uniforms of gray slacks, royal blue tops and white boots, gloves and ties.
Founded in 1940, the Erie, Mich.-based club is growing as members recruit their daughters, granddaughters and women they meet at races and other gatherings.
President Brenda Thatcher, 47, of Toledo, Ohio, said she was a motorcyclist for years before attending her first Motor Maids event and realizing her riding days didn’t have to end.
“I had a major fear — it was a true phobia — of growing old. I thought at 40, I was done,” she said. “Then you come and meet this group of women and you see ages from 16 to 85 or older, and they’re sharp as a tack, they’re fun, they’re loving — and you couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Some longtime members, such as Mrs. Struck and Margaret Wilson, 85, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had families or husbands in the motorcycle business.
“I’ve been riding since my husband gave me a brand-new Harley-Davidson for my 26th birthday in 1946 when he came back from overseas,” she said.
She joined the Motor Maids five years later.
U.S.-made Harleys remain popular with club members, partly because some models have low rider positions that make it easier for women to mount the bikes and reach the ground from the saddle.
Other manufacturers have increased their offerings of similar designs in recent decades.
Women accounted for 9.6 percent of U.S. motorcycle owners in 2003, compared with 8.2 percent in 1998 and 6.4 percent in 1990, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council.
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