Hall of Fame Inductee - 2006
In 1939, at age 25, Marge Dwyer was the first female long distance rider to attend the Black Hills Motor Classic. She rode her own motorcycle more than 300 miles to the Rally from a distance of more than 300 miles. No small feat at the time.Marjorie Dwyer grew up on a farm near Hurley, South Dakota. After attending high school in Hurley, she completed teacher’s training and became qualified as a rural schoolteacher. In her earliest years of teaching, Ms. Dwyer purchased a used 1935 Harley-Davidson motorcycle to commute to and from her home on the farm and her teaching job. In the spring of the 1938-1939 school year, she purchased a brand new bike she named “Asthma”, a 45 cubic inch Harley-Davidson with aluminum heads that was hard to start. “I named it ‘Asthma’ because it coughed and spit,” she said.
When her school closed in May 1939, Marge said goodbye to her 31 students and her family and, along with her 19 year-old sister Angie, also a rural schoolteacher, she rode off on Asthma. It was the two sisters’ intention to tour the Rocky Mountains and then head for the Pacific Northwest, visiting Yellowstone Park along the way. Their plan for the summer was to live out of the two saddlebags and one suitcase. The women were dressed in canvas helmets, boots, breeches and leather coats. They stayed with relatives and in tourist cabins along the way for fees ranging from 75 cents to $1.50 per night. In 1939 many of the roads they traveled were gravel.
When they arrived in Tacoma, Washington, they linked up with the Tacoma Motorcycle Club and attended several of the club’s functions. It was at one of these functions that Marge learned to do the “Squirrel”. The maneuver was realized by leaning the cycle over and then putting “one foot down, give it a lot of gas and the back wheel goes around and the front wheel stays in the middle” she said.
Two of the Tacoma Club riders were planning to visit the 1939 World Exposition in San Francisco and the Dwyer girls decided to tag along. After seeing the “fair” in San Francisco, they headed back home to South Dakota, taking in the 1939 Black Hills Motor Classic in Sturgis along the way. At this point they had traveled over 5,600 miles on Asthma. When they returned home to Hurley, South Dakota, the total mileage for this summer adventure was 6070 miles.
Marge Dwyer was probably the very first woman to compete in an official Rally event.
Marge returned to Sturgis for the 1940 and 1941 BH Motor Classics. In 1941 she entered an AMA sanctioned “endurance” competition sponsored by the Mile High Rambler’s Motorcycle Club of Lead. In this enduro race Ms. Dwyer, the only female, competed with seven male riders. The race covered about 30 miles and included some difficult trails, a creek crossing, and other hazards in the forest around Sturgis. Clarence Hoel won the competition and Marge came in next to last in seventh place. “We had to follow flags, red for right turns, and green for left turns.” She said. “One of the boys missed a turn and got lost and so I finished ahead of him!” She is still proud of this feat after all these years.
On another summer trip in 1940, the Dwyer sisters went to Denver, Colorado. They spent about 3 weeks living in the basement apartment provided by a lady who was connected to the Denver Motorcycle Club. During their stay in Denver, the girls went on excursions with the club. In one of these outings, they rode Asthma to the top of Pike’s Peak. Later they joined the Denver club for their annual trek to the Sturgis Rally. After the Rally ended, they returned to Colorado for more mountain touring. On the way home to Hurley, an oncoming car crossed the imaginary centerline in a curve on a graveled road in Wyoming forcing the two Dwyer girls and Asthma to take the ditch. Asthma’s headlight was damaged and Marge broke her ankle. After she was patched up in a clinic at Lyman, Wyoming the girls headed back to South Dakota. Along the way they met up with a soldier who was on leave and riding home from San Diego to New York. Since Asthma had no headlight, the soldier led the way for them during dawn and dusk. He accompanied them as far as Omaha. From there they headed home to Hurley.
In 1942, Marge Dwyer began teaching Morse Code to pilots in training at the Army Air Corps training facility in Sioux Falls. After the war in 1945, she and Angie took their last tour on Asthma. They rode the trusty Harley-Davidson to Miami. Angie decided to stay in Miami, and Marge had secured a job in Sao Paulo, Brazil teaching Morse Code to Brazilian pilots. Since she could not take her bike to Brazil, Marge had to sell Asthma to a soldier in Boca Raton, Florida.
In 1946 Marge returned to Hurley and married Lyle Hummel. The couple took over the Dwyer family farm and started their family, but her spirit of adventure lived on. She visited the Rally several times in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but in a car. Her children recall these trips and also several trips when she would pack them up and head out to visit relatives in Washington and California while Lyle stayed home on the farm. In 2002 she was asked to share pictures of her visit to Tacoma, Washington in 1939 with the Pioneer Motorcycle Museum in that city.
Also in 2002, Marge got to ride on the back of a brand new Harley on a trip from Lennox to Chancellor, South Dakota and back. It was a good ride and she had the pleasure of feeling the wind in her face and the freedom of the road for one more time. She has been able to visit the Rally with one of her sons for the last three years, and one of her greatest experiences was meeting Pearl Hoel at the White Plate Flat Tracker’s meeting in 2004.
Marjorie Dwyer Hummel has already been recognized by the Tacoma’s Pioneer Motorcycle Museum as a female motorcycle-touring pioneer. The pictures of her 1939 summer visit there are on display at that facility. It is due time that Marge is recognized in her own state of South Dakota as a true motorcycling pioneer.
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Sturgis Museum and Hall of Fame - Sturgis, South Dakota