Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE F or Henry DeGouw it all started in 1964 at a road race held at a small airport in Punta Gorda, Flor- ida. DeGouw entered his BSA Gold Star and even though it didn't end up being a great race for him, DeGouw was hooked. No one knew it at the time, but that 20-year-old rookie rider on the Gold Star would go on to dedicate his life to road racing for the next six decades and leave an indelible impact on the sport he loved. DeGouw was born in Gainesville, Florida, lived in his father's hometown of Chicago as a kid, then moved back to Florida where he attended high school in Lake Worth. DeGouw said when he was 12 or 13 he rode a Whizzer and that whetted his appetite for motorcycling. The first bike he owned was a Mustang. When he was a junior in high school DeGouw stepped up big time and became the proud owner of a 1959 AJS 650. "That was a rare bike too," DeGouw says of the AJS. "I had the first one in Palm Beach county. I got into a few run-ins with the cops on that thing." After a bad crash on his bike, it looked like the hobby of motorcycling might become just a passing fling of his youth. He sold his bike, got a car, and that looked to be it, but then he heard about road racing and thought he'd like to give that a try. That's when he got the Gold Star and began what would turn out to be a 20-plus year stretch as a motorcycle road racer. According to DeGouw, there were no rider schools, track days or anything like that to get rid- ers prepared for competition in those days. "You were thrown to the wolves immediately," DeGouw recalls. "I remember in that race in Punta Gorda, I ran against Larry Schafer, who was a top AMA Pro who ran at Daytona. So, you were thrown in the deep end and I actually crashed out of my first race. Fortunately, I didn't get hurt." The 1960s were an interesting time for road rac- ing in America. It was gaining popularity in pockets of the country, including Florida. The only problem was, there were very few genuine road courses at the time, so the organizer improvised and held races on airports, drags strips and just about any place they could string together a few corners. "They'd make the corners with haybales and stuff like that," DeGouw says of those early days of the sport. They ran at places like Punta Gorda, Dade City, Fernandina Beach, Miami-Hollywood Speedway and of course the big races at Daytona International Speedway. Most of the races in Florida in those days were AMA-sanctioned events run by local clubs. De- Gouw said by the late '60s the Florida Grand Prix Riders Association emerged headed by another racer named Dwaine Williams, who DeGouw said really kept the sport alive in the state of Florida. One place where they did have a genuine road SIX DECADES OF DEDICATION TO ROAD P98

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