Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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P18 THEWIND IN ANOTHER VOTE SET FOR CLARK INDUCTION Heritage Foundation (AMHF) Board of Directors decided dur- ing meetings last week in Ohio that a supplemental vote will be held for the inclusion of Derek "Nobby" Clark in this year's Hall of Fame induction class. The decision, announced on T Thursday, July 19, is in response to errors that occurred in the 2012 AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame balloting process that led to Clark being announced as an inductee in a press release, then being un-inducted in a second release. According to the chairman of the AMHF, Jeffrey Heininger, the process doesn't affect the other 2012 Hall of Fame inductees and members will be contacted this week to get the ballots going again. "There was a tremendous amount of deliberation, obvi- ously," Heininger said in a phone conversation on Monday, July 23. "This board [the American Motorcycle Heritage Founda- tion] is a phenomenal group of tremendously talented people. They've all done tremendous things – Eddie Cole and Chris Carter and new people like Rick Mitchell and Andy Ording. We've got probably one of the strongest business boards in the motorcycle business, period. he American Motorcycle Obviously, when you have a chal- lenge like what we've created for ourselves, you need pretty darn good input and help to figure things out and I really do believe that we democratically and sys- tematically came up with the best solution based on the outcome of the meeting." Heininger, who was re-elected as chairman at the same meeting in Ohio last week, has been the chairman of the AMHF for three years. board members on our board. Currently we have 19 people on our board, three of which are members of the AMA board as well: Stan Simpson, Ken Ford and Art More." What involvement did AMA President Rob Dingman and AMA board member Stan Simpson have in all of this? "The involvement that Mr. Dingman and Mr. Simpson had in this… they were frankly my coaches. We identified that we "This is not an AMA problem. This is a motorcycle Hall of Fame problem. This has nothing to do with that membership and it has everything to do with the members of the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. -Jeffrey Heininger We asked Heininger a few questions regarding the Clark debacle. Who is in actually in charge? And can you explain how does the corporate relationship be- tween the AMA and the Hall of Fame work? "The Hall of Fame is a wholly owned subsidiary of the AMA," Heininger said. "It is a separate, non-profit organization. We are a 501 (c) (3). I'm not sure what the AMA is, but it's different. There- fore it requires different boards. We also have three of the AMA had a problem throughout in that balloting process and so I was… we've known about it. I'll be hon- est with you: It just didn't seem as serious as it really was. I criticize myself and I can look in the mir- ror right now and say, 'I'm disap- pointed in you, Jeff.' But as soon as we identified that there was a missing link in this deal, I went to those guys and explained it to them. They said, 'You're going to be in Ohio in a couple of weeks so let's talk and let's see what we need to do.' Their involvement in this thing has really been to "