Reading Motorcycle Club
BY: Bruce Postenreadingeagle.com
It took five years for the Reading Motorcycle Club to create a 200-page fully illustrated book that documents the club's 100-year history.
The book, published more than a year ago, provides a window into a multitude of social and cultural changes in the 20th and 21st centuries and highlights Reading as a historical hotbed of bicycle and motorcycle production.
But it didn't take five years for the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress in Washington to recognize the book's distinctive contribution to the nation's history, even though it took months of one man's tenacity to bring it to their attention.
Hal Hughes, 53, of Emmaus, Lehigh County, a club member who has been riding for 35 years, learned recently that the two prominent national institutions eagerly accepted copies of the book, "History of the Reading Motorcycle Club: 1911-2011," to include in their national collections.
Since summer, it took Hughes months and dozens of phone calls to finally track down the appropriate departments and personnel that ultimately were extremely interested in the book, he said.
He recently received letters from officials at both organizations citing the book's historical significance. The letters will be displayed along with copies of the book at the club's Oley Township headquarters. The club boasts about 1,200 members.
"Reading is one of the oldest motorcycle clubs in the nation that managed to keep a great record of its early history," Hughes said.
That fact wasn't lost on Nancy Gwinn, Smithsonian Institution Library director, who wrote the club a letter after the book donation, stating, "Researchers using SIL's National Museum of American History Library will find this donation especially significant."
From Bridgetta C. Jenkins of the Library of Congress came the response: "We are happy to inform you that the publication was selected for addition to the library's general collections, and was assigned Library of Congress control numbers: 2012515500."
"It was a half-year process, but I have to say everyone I spoke to in the government was very helpful in trying to get me to the right people," Hughes said. "It guess I really expected hitting a dead end."
But he didn't. As a motorcyclist, Hughes' driving persistence paid off.
Contact Bruce R. Posten: 610-371-5059 or bposten@readingeagle.com.