Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1078866
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE A mong the close-knit fraternity of motorcyclists in central Indi- ana in the 1960s and '70s, Ralph Moore was an iconic personality. Moore was not only a national-cal- iber racer, whose career spanned the 1920s to the late 1950s, he meant much more to the Hoosier racing scene than just being a big-name rider. Over the years, dozens of racers would not have been able to pursue their dream of racing had it not been for Moore's support. His motorcycle dealership on the near eastside of Indy was a hangout for motorcycle riders of all types. Motocrossers, road rac- ers, flat trackers, hillclimbers, drag racers and regular everyday riders all rubbed elbows at Indiana Cycle Sales and, at one time or another, most likely got help from Moore and his dealership. Bringing the motorcycling com- munity together was important to Moore. He was one of the found- ers of the Mid-West Motorcycle Club. Mid-West M.C. is the oldest motorcycle club in Indiana and one of the 10 oldest in the United States. The club was founded in 1923 in the basement of John Mor- gan's Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Shop on South Meridian Street in Indianapolis. The goals that Moore and the other founders of the club worked towards were making Mid- West an asset to the city, doing P102 MOORE THAN MEETS THE EYE a consistent top-five-ranked AMA National Hillclimb racer from the late 1920s through the late 1930s. He was just 20 years old when he helped start the Mid-West Mo- torcycle Club in 1923. The club be- came one of the original chartered clubs when the AMA was founded in 1924. Over the years Moore assumed ever-greater leadership roles with the club. During the dark days of World War II, when so many clubs foundered and dropped their membership with the struggling AMA, Moore made sure Mid-West remained steady with its support of the national body and maintained the club's charter even during that period of meager funding. In the mid-1930s, Moore what they could to fight back against the negative image of motorcyclists especially preva- lent in the 1960s and '70s. The club promoted all kinds of activ- ities for riders, including races, group tours and, perhaps most notably, coordinating charitable rides and activities. Moore was active with Mid- West M.C. throughout his adult life. In fact, the night Ralph died from a heart attack in 1977, he'd just returned home from a club meeting. Moore got into motorcycling in the early days, taking a job in an Indianapolis Harley-Davidson shop in 1919 while a teenager. He began competing in hillclimbs during the heyday of that genre in the 1920s. At the height of factory involvement in hillclimb, Moore ascended the ranks to become one of the elite climbers of his time. In 1929, he became a Harley factory-supported rider when Milwaukee sent him a machine for competition. Surpris- ingly, Moore found his own hillclimb rig better than the one Harley sent, so he returned the factory machine and kept running the bikes he built. He won numerous local and regional climbs and several times was on the verge of winning a national championship in the 1930s only to be thwarted, mostly by rival Joe Petrali, arguably the greatest hillclimber of all-time. Moore was Ralph Moore's AMA Hillclimb career spanned close to 30 years starting in the early 1920s. He was good enough that Harley-Davidson gave him support. Here he is on one of his hillclimb rigs.