Steel City riding queen gets a fitting tribute
15 to be inducted into Motorcycle Hall of Fame
Muriel Kelly is part of a group, the Steel City Riders, out of Hamilton. Everyone calls her Butch. In her immaculate townhouse, Butch put out a plate of artful cookies, set a pot of tea on a tray and asked if I preferred a mug or a china cup and saucer. She's maybe 5 feet, her hair perfectly coiffed, her cat never far from her reach. Tiny Butch sat talking to me in her living room surrounded by photos of her three children, all in their 50s. We were also immersed in the biggest presence of all, her husband, Jim Kelly.
The Steel City Riders have been the core of off-road motorcycling in this area for decades. Jim Kelly taught kids how to ride. Every week, if you could get your hands on a bike and get someone to haul it over to the abandoned fields off Service Rd., he would be there. I watched that man in rain or shine, sweltering heat and frost-riddled air dispensing help and encouragement to any kid who wanted it.
It wasn't his job. He had a day job with Revenue Canada. But his involvement with getting kids into riding took up twice as many hours and had started long before. So what kind of girl do you marry when motorcycles appear to be your first love? You marry Butch. And it's 1952 and you teach her how to ride. Even though her parents are against it. Even though you're injured when she's pregnant with your first child, and her parents rage, "This child will be an orphan before it's even born!"
Butch moved in Jim's world seamlessly. "You either join 'em or be really lonely," she says with a laugh. Though also taking to the traditional "girl work" of club races – scorekeeping, sign-ins, endless reams of paperwork – she also rode. "We used to have girl races, back in the '50s. After the guys had raced, some of us would head out and race. Did that when I was pregnant," she mused.
And that endless paperwork expanded as the club did. Today, they get upwards of 200 riders out to local events. Butch continues to work with the FIM (The International Motorcycle Federation), and just returned from helping with the 6 Day, a gruelling rally-type race that this year was staged in Portugal. She does her "housekeeping" work there, too. Travelling on her own dime, as part of the Canadian arm that is an integral part of this event.
What's the most remarkable thing about this lifelong devotion to helping others to ride? Her beloved Jim had a fatal heart attack during a race in 1997. Dying while riding may have been the only poetic way for this man to go – and he was a poet as well as a rider – but for Butch, the loss was incalculable, and still fresh.
I'll be watching as they induct the Steel City Riders into the Hall of Fame tonight. It's a fitting honour for the little club that grew, and for all the people who so generously made it happen.
But especially for Butch Kelly.
Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturdays in Wheels. www.lorraineonline.ca
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