![]() ![]() And it got so big that they even called it 'Road Knights weekend.'"īut even while members of the Road Knights were involved in those field meet events, club member William Pendleton (member since 1968) said they also knew it all wouldn't last forever.ĭue to manpower issues, the Road Knights haven't participated or sponsored the Father's Day weekend events for years now, Pendleton noted, though some other individuals have tried to keep the festivities going. "We had them coming from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, Alabama, you name it. "The event was so big that we had people coming from everywhere," he said. Lee Gleaves, who joined the club in 1976, talked about the popularity of those annual field meets. Grier and the rest of the Road Knights hope that many of those trophies can be displayed at Douglass School once the project at that facility is completed. They'd even give out trophies to the winners, Grier quipped, motioning to the mountain of trophies that still sit in a back room of the Locke Street property. Those field meets - which went on for decades - were mainly competitions between motorcycle clubs throughout the Midwest, Grier noted, featuring categories of events like "best dressed club," "largest member club" or "oldest rider." In the early-1970s, the Road Knights became sanctioned through the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) and began holding motorcycle field meets on Father's Day weekend in front of their clubhouse before heading out to the Kokomo Speedway or the Bunker Hill Drag Strip to top off the festivities. "We were very selective on who was able to join, and we made sure everyone knew that we were a clean club because we didn't want to get a bad reputation." ![]() "So, we were always dressed really well, and our bikes were always very, very clean," Grier added. We always said your name is your bond, and we didn't want anybody talking about us in a bad way. The one thing we wanted to have was a good name. "We didn't want to be one of those outlaw clubs that went around terrorizing the neighborhood. "Our focus was mainly about safety and security at the time," Clarence Grier, one of the club's founding members, said. ![]() It was 1968 when a group of local African American motorcycle riders began meeting inside a garage here in Kokomo that they monikered "Hoganville," aptly named because of the surname of several of the group's members. So last week, before the club's Locke property is officially someone else's, the Tribune caught up with the Road Knights to reminisce about the club's place in Kokomo history, as well as where the men go from here. And though none of the men like to use the word "disbanding," they do admit that the logistics just aren't there anymore to successfully maintain a clubhouse and participate in community events the way they used to. ![]()
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