VOL. 52 ISSUE 14 APRIL 7, 2015 P23
want me to go riding with them. It was
still pretty rare for a woman to ride a
motorcycle back in those days and
the guys got a big kick out of people's
reaction when they saw me riding."
Both Sharon and Chuck ended up
working in the motorcycling industry.
Sharon was business manager for
J&R Engineering, a manufacturer of
motorcycle exhaust systems, while
Chuck was an editor for Cycle and
later Cycle World.
In 1965, Chuck left Cycle World
and bought a floundering Los Ange-
les-area motorcycling newspaper and
renamed it Cycle News. In the early
days of the new publication, it was
Sharon's income that not only kept the
Claytons going, but kept Cycle News afloat as
well.
"I would come home from my job at J&R and
then go to work for Cycle News, which we ran
out of our living room," Sharon laughed. "Our
phone number was listed and we'd have drunks
calling us up from the middle of the desert at 3
a.m., phoning in race results."
The hard work eventually began to pay off and
Cycle News grew—staff was hired, office space
was acquired and home phone numbers were un-
listed. By 1966, Sharon had left J&R and begun
working full-time for Cycle News. Under Sharon's
direction, circulation grew rapidly and the paper
branched out of Southern California to become
national. During the late 1960s and early 1970s,
Cycle News expanded further and eventually
published three regional editions.
Cycle News served as sort of a university for
the motorcycling industry. Just about every maga-
zine editor, book author and ad sales person in
motorcycling publishing worked as a contributor
or staffer for Cycle News at one time or another.
Sharon was a driving force in keeping Cycle
News on the forefront of publishing technology.
While Chuck was perfectly content with typewriter
and paper, Sharon worked hard to get the pub-
lication into the computer age. Cycle News was
also one of the first motorcycling publications to
have a presence on the Internet in the 1990s.
The Claytons reaped rewards of their deter-
mination and sacrifice and decided to try to give
back to the industry that had given them so much.
To do that, they formed the Clayton Memorial
Foundation to assist injured racers.
"We had a friend who took his life after a racing
accident," Sharon said. "He couldn't come up
with the money for some basic needs. We decid-
ed to start the foundation to try to help when the
need is the greatest."
Over the years Clayton Foundation donated
much needed money to racers working to rebuild
their lives after accidents.
Chuck died in 1992 and Sharon continued to
run the business until the mid-1990s, when she
retired. For several years afterwards she oversaw
the foundation and served as president of the
publishing company. She was inducted into the
Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2000. Sharon said
she considered herself fortunate to have been
part of such an exciting and dynamic sport.
Larry Lawrence
