Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 19 MAY 13, 2014 P119 I pulled into the pits Cooley, Sr. came walking over to me and told me I was fine and I would be able to race in the next race. It turns out it they were simply watching my lines to make sure I held them through the turns." Her motorcycling experience up to that point con- sisted of six months of commuting on a Honda C110. Now she was racing a 125cc Honda CB92 set up completely in road racing trim. The only slight issue McGee might have had racing the diminutive Honda was her height of six-feet. "Fortunately I was thin and very flexible," McGee says. "So I didn't have any ma- jor issues fitting on the bike." Tall, thin and pretty, McGee struck quite a figure at the AFM races and initially got a lot of stares. But she said gradually a comradery between her fellow racers was formed and they made her feel at ease even though none of them had raced against a woman before. There were only few isolated inci- dents where she met some resistance. Once from another racer's girlfriend, who thought it was ridic- ulous that Mary raced and told her as much, and another time at a track in Reno in 1962 where track officials initially told her she couldn't race, until her fellow Southern California racers vouched for her and convinced the Reno officials that it was okay. Under the tutelage of John McLaughlin she pro- gressed well road racing motorcycles and actually earned AFM No. 20 in 1962, racing at tracks like Cotati Raceway, Santa Barbara, the port at Stock- ton, San Luis Obispo, Hanford Motor Speedway, Reno, Willow Springs, Laguna Seca and Riverside International Raceway. It was at a New Year's Eve party where actor and racer Steve McQueen jokingly said to Mary, "Mc- Gee, you've got to get off that pansy road race bike and try some 'real' bike racing in the desert." McGee's husband worked at Honda and got her a 250 Scrambler to practice off-road riding and three months later she surprised McQueen and the rest of the desert rats by showing up to race an enduro at Jawbone. McGee was more than a little intimidated, but they convinced her to try it, telling her it was one of the easiest events. "I just remember we went up and up and up and then we got to the top and I saw the motorcy- cles going left and straight down and I stopped," McGee said. "I looked down and it was a helluva way down. Here comes Dave Ekins, a big smile on his face, and he said, 'Mary, did we forget to teach you how to go downhill?' He said, 'Just put it in third gear and go.' I thought, 'Oh Christ.' I made it down. I fell two or three times. That night we were all at the restaurant and what do you sup- pose the first thing that came out of their mouths – 'Oh, this must have been one of the toughest races of the year.'" McGee went on to race in some of the biggest off-road events of the era, including once soloing in and finishing the Baja 500. In December of 1965 Wes Cooley, Sr. called her and told her they were going to hold a 'Moto'- cross. "I had no idea what it was, but it turned out I loved this motocross thing because I wasn't stuck out there in that damn desert," McGee laughs. "Mile and miles from nowhere and you break a footpeg and have to ride for miles and miles with your foot on an engine casing? I gotta tell you that's not a lot of fun." In addition to racing McGee also worked for a time in the industry in the 1970s and '80s for a sales rep for Motorcyclist magazine and a few lesser-known books. Today at 77 McGee still has the desire to race, but old injuries and arthritis keep her away. She keeps up with racing and is thrilled with the ad- vancement women riders are making in the sport today. When asked what she felt was her big- gest achievement in motorcycle racing, McGee thought about it for a second and then said, "My best achievement was I was out there doing it. I was out there doing it, had a lot of fun, I met so many great people that I still know today." CN MARY IN MOTION Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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