Club Heritage

The story of the Club – summary of its history a Preface -
Our Club had a beginning. It saw growth, change and then it dwindled,became weak, nearly died. It was born again. The old story was replaced with a new narrative; a kind of remaking of the original story.The Club came about because citizens with a common hobby interest came together at a certain time in a certain place. They recognized that no similar club existed in their environs, the south end of Seattle. Little did they know, at the time, how theirs would outlive all the others and come down to be the oldest existing full motorcycle club in Seattle and King County. Between its beginning and today many things occurred. The Club changed and evolved. Sometimes it was a broad and extensive group that covered nearly every aspect of cycling. Other years it became very narrow in its focus, stressing only one aspect of riding. The intensity of the motoring experience is not conducive to historical collection. Typically a rider can’t wait until the next excuse to ride, whether it’s tomorrow’s commute to work or the vacation trip of a hundred miles. Members of the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club were too busy riding, racing and working on and attending events of their own creation. There was next week’s race, next year’s gypsy tour, the parades, the speeches, the planning the hard work of keeping it all moving forward. Photos were taken, meeting minutes jotted down, advertisements created, newspaper articles published but no one bothered to keep track of it all in a comprehensive way because it was behind them. Today the Club’s history is a scavenger’s meal of old photos; old newspaper articles and anecdotal stories told by the oldest surviving members. The challenge is to pluck enough meat off those dead bones of history to tell a compelling story of an American phenomenon: The Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club. The origins 1941 to 1944. We’ve settled on the date of 1941 for the beginnings of the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club (JRMC, the Club) because one of the surviving founders, Lila Bulen shared the story of its creation. She was only seventeen when she married 1930 at the very beginning of the Great Depression. Her narrative from 2005 is this: On Memorial Day weekend 1941 they rode on Ken’s pre- war Harley-Davidson 45 flat head to their destination and sat around a campfire when the rumble of another motorcycle came closer and closer until a high school friend, Woody Combs blasted over the top of a nearby hill and roared over to their camp. They talked about motorcycling, their big joy in life. Why not ride together all the time, great reason to belong to a motorcycle club. They looked at their options. To the south in Tacoma was Washington State’s oldest, the Tacoma Motorcycle Club dating from World War I and known locally as the Tacoma Ducks. But the idea of riding 30 miles on the roads of that time just to make a meeting wasn’t very appealing. Tacoma was out. Seattle had once had an even older club but by the summer of 1941 the Seattle Motorcycle Club of 1909 had faded away. It would be resurrected during the Cold War as a dirt bike club. But at this time it was gone. What else was there? In north Seattle was the Queen City Motorcycle Club centered on Carkeek Park. They had been founded in 1938. Why not contact them about joining? They played with the idea and rejected it. The QCMC was a fine group – they knew most of the members but they really didn’t want to have to ride through downtown on the streets of those days to attend meetings. So what was left? There was also the Seattle Cossacks but they focused on being a drill team with some limited participation in other kinds of motorcycle events. This didn’t appeal to the Bulens and friends. Woody proposed to the Bulens that they should start a Club for south end motorcyclists. The three of them agreed to the idea. They discussed what they wanted. They were all graduates of local high schools and they planned to approach other young people to see if they’d like to join. Then they decided on a name. Seattle is a nautical town and the name “Jolly Rogers” was perfect. So they minted the name, “Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club” even though they called themselves “the gang”. They had not yet decided on a mascot, image or any symbol to represent their new club. That could wait. For now it was about people getting out on the roads and having fun together. For the remainder of the summer and into the early autumn they got together with other riding friends and then posted notices of their club for other south Seattle and south suburbs to join. The Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club started its role as a part of Seattle’s motor culture. 1941 ended in disaster for the United States. December 7th saw the destruction of the battleships at Pearl Harbor and America catapulted into the horrors of World War II. Most of the young men enlisted in the armed forces. The Club’s woman took over during the war. From 1941 to 1943 most activity of motorcycle clubs and the general population ground to a halt. Fuel was rationed. New tires became non-existent. All the usual amenities of a recreational life were taken away from the population and, of necessity, given to the armed forces for the titanic struggle ahead. By 1943 the Bulens made a decision of great importance for Club history: they purchased a potato farm in the Seatac/Kent area off Military Road. Within two years this would become the famous track and hill climb site and would remain a feature of Seattle area motorcycle life for the next 55 years. Surviving photographs show that by 1944 the Club was actively holding events again; local runs to restaurants. Military people on pass or leave and civilians actively participated in runs and other Club events. Looking at the photos from this time one can easily see late 1930’s Harley’s and Indians with bald tires. Some of these motorcycles had been customized with racy paint jobs and new 1940 tank badges. There is still no sign of Club uniforms but there are signs that they were looking for identity. The winged wheel was presented as a possible logo. Earl Truttman’s mother made a needlepoint winged wheel logo with JRMC embroidered on the bottom. Of greater importance is the fact that the Club joined the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) in 1942. The beginning of organized events – 1945 to 1946. By the end of 1944 everyone knew that the end of World War II was coming. The Nazi’s were being ruthlessly crushed by the Allies from the West and the Soviets from the East. The Japanese were on the brink of collapse and only their continued fanaticism slowed our military. But the end was in sight and by August 1945 it would all be over. This had an immediate effect on Seattle. Gasoline was no longer rationed and new tires were being sold. It also meant competition events could start again. Club activities throughout the Seattle area accelerated. The north end Queen City Motorcycle Club held rides to Snoqualmie Pass as early as the winter of 1945. By summer they held a mud run that the Jolly Rogers Attended. The JRMC held its first AMA sanctioned event. Fortunately this event had extensive photographic coverage and thanks to Burt Rhotan and other early members, we have surviving photographs that allow us to reconstruct the races. In December the Club held the first of many Christmas parties, a tradition that has continued, off and on ever since. The 1945 party was attended by the Press. There is evidence of this through newspaper clippings but a mystery still exists as to which paper took the photo. The PI and the Times were on strike at that time so who took the photo? This picture is famous not only because it was the first but because it showed all the charter members of the Club and also the unveiling of the Club’s new mascot and symbol, the one-eyed motorcycle pirate. This character, based on the old Highline High School mascot wears a pokka-dot bandana, motorcycle goggles and an eye-patch and holds a dagger in his mouth. It has been with us ever since. The Club also started to wear uniforms. Prior to 1945 there is no evidence of any Club uniforms. But in 1945 we see pictures of Woody Combs wearing a sweatshirt with “Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club”. The lettering is in the fashion of Harley Davidson and Indian Motorcycle sweaters of the pre-war period. In 1946 the Club incorporated with the State of Washington and created its first membership roster. It was now an established motorcycle club. The Club Expands – 1947 to 1949. Events are held regularly now with more emphasis on track and field and less on road runs. The Club has become more structured and a uniform was now in place. Members wore a Blue police cap with a white brim and with the “Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club” shield badge on it. Usually they would stick AMA year pins and event pins on the hat. Additionally they wore black denim shirts with the motorcycle pirate patch on the back of the shirt, the AMA logo on the top right sleeve and their Club name on the top left sleeve. This remained the basic uniform for decades. Some years white neckties were added and later two pins with the Club abbreviation of “J.R.M.C.” were worn on both shirt lapels closest to the person’s throat. Old photos show variations on this over the years. Interestingly, the JRMC had the Washington State Patrol provide security at its track in 1945. 1947 saw a close linkage with the Queen City Motorcycle Club. Luckily for those of us today, the Seattle Times sent a reporter along on a combined road run to Snoqualmie Pass showing riders from both clubs going up to the Summit Inn and then playing around in the snow. A close relationship with the QCMC continued until that club held its last organized event 1953. Annual events continued. The bikes used continued to be Harley Davidsons, Indians, Triumphs and Ariels but other makes of English motorcycles were starting to appear – Nortons, BSA, Matchless and AJS as well as other more obscure makes. Indian was making its strongest presence ever because Club member Paul Stockinger worked at the Indian dealer on Capitol Hill in Seattle. For a few years, into the early 1950s the Indian dealership held its “Indian Days” on the JRMC Club grounds. The Early 1950s – The Club links up with the Northwest Motorcycle Association. By the 1953 the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club was a powerhouse. Regular track events, road runs and participation in the annual Seafair parade began. Additionally the newly created Northwest Motorcycle Association (NMA)– a regional sanctioning group was created. The exact reason for its creation was that many people were tiring of the AMA’s politics and motorcycle riders of the Northwest felt they should have their own sanctioning body. The Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club continued to sanction through the AMA but its competitive events were now under the auspices of both groups with the NMA slightly edging out the AMA in respect and regard. The NMA was structured around officer elections of followers of all its member clubs so that every club felt it had a say in racing rules and regulations. The JRMC’s commitment to the NMA lasted for over two decades while at the same time the Club continued to get annual  harters from the AMA. Another feature of the 1950s was that the Club held weekly meetings. It had a women’s auxiliary which had a modified version of the men’s uniform but with a smaller pirate back patch. The reason for the weekly meetings was the incredible volume of work the Club participated in. There were annual field events – two hill climbs and two track events each year. Additionally the JRMC attended the events of most other clubs in the area. They held an annual awards ceremony, an annual Christmas party, Dances for motorcyclists and they attended the Seafair, Renton and Oak Harbor parades each summer. The parade work involved building floats with themes built around popular rock and roll music of the times. The Late 1950s The Club had extensive influence in the motorcycling world of Seattle. It was written up in the local papers regularly and it had political power such that politicians became key-note speakers at its annual awards ceremonies. The Club started up a motorcycle drill team and it competed against the Seattle Police Department’s motorcycle drill team, the Seattle Cossacks and others. Certain years it was judged the best. The AMA reigns supreme – 1960 to 1965. The power and influence of the JRMC reached its high point in the early 60s. In 1960 Governor Rossellini appeared as the key note speaker at that year’s annual awards ceremony. He talked about the future of highway work in the State of Washington to an  enthusiastic crowd of members. Another sign of the increasing influence of the Club was its ability in 1964 to get the AMA to hold the United States National Hill Climb on its hill. This was, perhaps, the historic high point of the Club for never again was it able to have such an influence on national motorcycling events. The hill climb of 1964 took an immense amount of work and that resulted in a very successful event with much praise for the Club from both the AMA at the national level and in the local Seattle papers. The JRMC also had excellent community relations thanks to its support of the Heart Fund and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper’s Needy Children fund raising events. Lila Bulen played a major role thanks with her friendship with Royal Brougham a reporter for the Seattle Post Intelligencer (Seattle PI). Every December the JRMC with support from other clubs would put on competitive events and then hand over all the gate receipts to the charitable institution that it was supporting. These races were preserved ever after by Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI).For the next several years the JRMC continued to hold a powerful position regionally and its AMA sanctioned track races and hill climbs were a draw for the best hill climbers and racers in the west. Outlaws on the Horizon 1966 and on Motorcycling went through serious culture shock after 1965. This was the result of the outlaw biker phenomenon. Previous to 1965 the papers looked at motorcycling as a sport and gave competitive events regular coverage in their sports pages. But with the emergence of the fierce and felonious Hell’s Angels and similar clubs on the American scene a transition occurred and it brought down the esteem of the JRMC and all other AMA sanctioned clubs to a low point. There had been violence and hooliganism with motorcyclists since the beginning of motorized transportation before World War I but the outlaw biker phenomenon was like nothing before. Sporadic and spontaneous outbursts of rowdy behavior that were occasionally commented on by the press prior to 1965 (the famous Hollister incident of 1947 is the best example) were now replaced with a veritable barrage of violent incidents. Nearly every week reports of rape, murder, violent inter-club warfare and illegal business practices by these clubs were reported. This gratuitous violence made readers lose interest in mundane reports on club races and hill climbs. After 1966 the newspapers gradually stopped reporting on the outcome of sanctioned motorcycle activities. Most clubs, including the JRMC tried to fight back by presenting themselves as the good guys of motorcycling. They went out of their way to be the antithesis of the outlaw clubs and took to writing editorials condemning them as well as doing public relations stunts such as group blood drives when several clubs would go together to donate blood. The press would obligingly write them up as nice folks showing the world that this cultural change in America was merely a short-lived phenomenon that would one-day soon go away. The real culture of motorcyclists was with the road riders and racers of the AMA. But they were wrong. The outlaws won the motorcycle culture war they had started and the rest of the country acknowledged this through almost continuous attacks on the hobby. The feeble  attempts by the sanctioned clubs including our JRMC were not very interesting reading. People weren’t interested in good motorcyclists. While hating it on one level, the violence of the outlaw motorcyclists was fascinating reading and people gobbled it up. The B-grade biker movies of the late 60s presented their version of violent motorcycle club life to a public all too happy to get itself worked into intense fear over a small percentage of motorcycle culture. The papers did the rest of the work of destroying the image of motorcycling that had existed prior to 1965. The nicest people on their Hondas, the AMA people with their natty uniformed club members – all were pushed, against their wills, into the same group with outlaws. All motorcyclists are bad. All are of questionable moral behavior and ultimately this is a pointless and dangerous hobby that needs to go away. Safety laws exploded on the scene in the last couple years of the 1960s. The police cap was replaced by legal mandate with the bubble head look of the Bell helmet. The harder the good motorcyclists tried to distance themselves from the outlaws the more they failed. Today all this makes interesting history and is a bit quaint and funny. And nearly all of us copy the outlaw clubs of the 1960s including those of us in the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club. Our uniforms were discarded for the outlaw vest and patch set up; the “cut” as it is commonly called today. We still have remnants of the old uniform but it has been reshaped in the model of the outlaws. During the late 1960s the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club continued to hold annual events, drill team activities, parades and charitable fund raisers. But the spirit of the Club had been broken by the changes going on in the motorcycling world and in the surrounding society. The period of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War swept aside the enthusiasm of the children of members to ride motorcycles and remain in the Club. Other hobbies seemed safer. Economic changes opened up new careers to family members and the older families saw their children and grand-children leave the area or, if they remained, show no interest in motorcycling. A long decline set in. The Club adjusted to the changing times as best it could. The track remained active but was now being used by other clubs – rented for the day or for the event. 1970 to 1980 The Club purchased a club house in Burien and used it for meetings but gradually the parades, drill team activities and track and hill events were dropped. Road events were no longer scheduled. Membership dwindled to a small group. Club activities disappear almost entirely from the newspapers. Only occasionally does an advertisement appear but all it shows is that the Jolly Roger track is being rented by other clubs. The same people who had been there since 1941 were around, joined by others but all were aging and the fact that their children and other young people weren’t joining was taking a toll. In 1980 the decision was made to modify the purpose of the Club. It was to become a for-profit rental business operating under the name of Jolly Rogers Motorway. Membership was closed and no new members accepted from that time. The Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club was a shadow of its former self but fortunately it continued to be chartered every year with the AMA and officers were elected and appointed. It became a client of the Jolly Rogers Motorway Corporation but at least it continued to exist even if mostly a ghost. 1981 to 1999 the Jolly Rogers Motorway From 1981 when the Motorway was created until 1998 when that corporation sold the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club track and hill to a developer named Polygon it carried out a regular renting business with other clubs. The biggest renter during these two decades was the Seattle Motorcycle Club. But others groups would rent it also. The Motorway was set up for its members to get a profit from the rent. Careful use of accountants assured them the maximum take with the least taxation. But it wasn’t all fun and profit. The old track had problems. Years of neglect were taking their toll and trespassers regularly used it putting the dangers of a law suit on the backs of the Motorway. Additionally illegal dumping began to occur as the suburbs encroached into what had always been rural land. The Motorway ran into legal issues resulting from the situation. Simple things like a functioning gate with lock gave the Motorway problems. Eventually it became evident that suburban encroachment was going to overwhelm them and that sooner or later some of the trespassing teenagers were going to crash and then sue them for their assets. So, in 1998, after Ken Bulen died, the Motorway looked for its best options and Polygon the developer made an offer. It was good and the Motorway accepted. This also allowed the Motorway to split the profits with the members with each making a lot of money from the sale. The Seattle Motorcycle Club made feeble attempts to counter offer but couldn’t come close to what the developers were offering. They tried to block the sale through legal finagling concerning rent and lease conditions but nothing could stop the sale and it went through in 1999. The Jolly Rogers Motorway Incorporated members who were also maintaining the existence of the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club even down to electing Club officers including referees every year made a tidy profit and they split it up based on the number of shares that each Motorway member had. The Bulens had the most and rightfully deserved to get the most money. But everyone present benefitted. Whether we like it or not the fact is that the Club’s greatest asset was sold and now the Club, even as a ghost organization had no further purpose. Or did it? (Compare this to how the Tacoma MC dealt with the same problem: when encroachment threatened their original track they sold it and bought a new one in Graham WA which is still used today). Fortunately for those of us today, those older JRMC members and current Motorway directors decided to keep the Club going and to open it, for the first time in decades, to outsiders to join. ​2000 to the 2026 – The Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club’s redemption and Evolution Like the Phoenix – that mythical bird that dies and is reborn in its own ashes the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club came back to life. To use another metaphor, it had been in a coma for nearly 20 years but it had remained alive. Members who had formed the original Club in 1941, in particular the Bulens, as well as all the other Motorway directors, had all joined the Club prior to the existence of the Motorway and now they closed the books on their rental corporation and reopened the Club to a new existence. To make a point about continuity, should anyone claim that our present Club has no connection to the original 1941 organization bear this in mind. Every single person in the JR Motorway had been a member of the JRMC prior to the existence of the Motorway. In addition, throughout the two decades that the Motorway existed, these same directors continued to keep the Club chartered with the AMA. Every year they did this and every year they elected JRMC Officers even though the Club was inactive. There was no breaking of the existence of the Club such as had happened with the original Seattle Motorcycle Club. We can rightfully say that the Jolly Rogers Motorcycle Club has continued to exist ever since 1941. In two and a half decades the resurrected Club grew into a strong urban club, reclaiming its original purpose; a time before hills and dirt tracks and back to its earliest iteration of a group of street riding motorcycle enthusiasts. In 2026 the JRMC became 85 years old and now is the oldest surviving motorcycle club in the city of Seattle. 

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Credit - Bone