VOL. 56 ISSUE 10 MARCH 12, 2019 P117
long-form video interviews with
all of these racers over the years,
but those kinds of interviews
require resources.
For a decade I was directly
involved with the Motorcycle Hall
of Fame, housed at AMA head-
quarters in Pickerington, Ohio. I
served as biographer for the Hall
of Fame for its first 10 years, and
I can't tell you how invaluable vid-
eo interviews of the Hall of Fame
members would be to that organi-
zation. Unfortunately, the Mo-
torcycle Hall of Fame was, and
continues to be, underfunded,
or at times perhaps resources
weren't best used to document
the sport's history thoroughly.
Whatever the case, I know
firsthand that dozens of Hall of
Fame inductees have never been
interviewed on video. It would
be wonderful if an entity like the
Motorcycle Hall of Fame, Barber
Museum, Wheels Through Time
Museum, National Motorcycle
Museum or other such institution
would work with Starr, grab the
ball and run with it!
Starr envisions an industry
sponsor perhaps stepping up to
support his work to the benefit of
all of these excellent museums.
"Maybe with the right sponsor,
all of the museums could share
these to their audience," he says.
Documentaries are other
possibilities of the future uses
of these interviews, including
books, web and magazine fea-
tures. All of these could benefit
from high-quality video interviews
of the legends of our sport.
Just a couple of weeks ago I
wrote about the excellent docu-
mentary film Black Lightning
– The Rollie Free Story. Audio
interviews of Free done by author
Jerry Hatfield nearly 40 years
ago added tremendous depth to
that film. And hearing the words
of Free from the old interviews
was icing on the cake. Imagine if
only Free had been interviewed
on film all those years ago.
There are some efforts out
there to capture on video the rid-
ers, crew members and industry
leaders. Todd Huffman, of The
Motocross Files fame, has been
doing an excellent job document-
ing the key players in motocross.
There are a few independent
efforts out there getting a few of
the flat track stars of the past, but
minimal on American road racers,
other than some work with past
world champions. In other words,
there is still a lot of work to do.
There is a vast source of
knowledge out there in the
stories of the legends of racing
and the motorcycle industry. It's
vital to gather that knowledge and
adequately preserve it so that the
current and future generations
of motorcycle leaders can learn
from both the mistakes and suc-
cesses of the past. We should
also simply just care enough
about our heroes to make sure
their stories are not lost to his-
tory.
If you have ideas on how to
help Starr get the interviews he
has preserved for future genera-
tions or are interested in helping
him conduct more such inter-
views you can reach him by email
at peter@starrfilm.com. CN
Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives
Dick Mann, Joe Leonard, and Gary
Nixon are just three of the subjects
of Peter Starr's excellent Heritage
Collection of interviews.
