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STURGIS —
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne helped dedicate four new
motorcycle-themed postage stamps in Sturgis as demonstrators
protested against campgrounds and bars they say encroach on nearby
Bear Butte.
The stamps were
unveiled in a ceremony Monday morning, then 400 motorcyclists rumbled
out of the Sturgis Community Center for the annual Mayor’s Ride,
which officially opens the town’s giant motorcycle rally.
“Ride safe,
respect one another, respect all of our surroundings and respect this
great nation of ours,” Kempthorne told riders and various local,
state and federal officials, who had gathered in a large, white tent
next to the community center.
Protesters at the
back of the tent held up signs and briefly chanted “Protect Bear
Butte” after Kempthorne spoke, but they didn’t interrupt
the ceremony. Outside, about 30 protesters held signs urging bikers
not to ride S.D. Highway 79, which passes Bear Butte.
Kempthorne had met
Sunday with tribal leaders in Rapid City, where he discussed a range
of issues, but demonstrators camped at the base of Bear Butte say he
should have talked to them, too. Many tribes hold Bear Butte sacred,
but it is a state park surrounded by private land.
“This man has
never taken time to learn about Indian affairs, and he’s in
charge of all our affairs,” said demonstrator Carter Camp of the
Ponca Tribe in Oklahoma.
Rep. Stephanie
Herseth, D-S.D., had visited the camp Monday morning. “It was by
and large a listening meeting,” Herseth spokesman Russ Levsen
said. At the stamp unveiling, Herseth acknowledged the protesters, by
thanking “those who are here to make strong statements about
other issues that are important to them.”
Camp said the Bear
Butte protest would continue through the Sturgis motorcycle rally,
which runs through Friday.
Sturgis Mayor Mark
Zeigler hosted the stamp ceremony and the ride. “It’s like
being among friends and family,” he said.
South Dakota’s
two senators, Republican John Thune and Democrat Tim Johnson, also
attended the ceremony, along with Gov. Mike Rounds, Utah Gov. Jon
Huntsman and James Miller III, chairman of the United States Postal
Service Board of Governors. White House chief of staff Josh Bolten
was scheduled to speak but did not attend.
The four new
39-cent postage stamps each picture an iconic motorcycle: a 1918
Cleveland, a 1940 Indian “Four,” a 1965 Harley-Davidson
Electra-Glide and a “circa 1970 chopper.”
Rounds said
motorcycles represent freedom. “They represent an opportunity to
be free and to ride free.”
Johnson called the
Sturgis rally a hallmark event for South Dakota. “All of our
state benefits by what goes on here,” he said.
Herseth said
motorcycles had a “special influence” on culture in the
United States, “but perhaps nowhere like it does here in
Sturgis, South Dakota.”
Thune, who grew up
in Murdo near Interstate 90, remembered working in restaurants and
motels during past rallies. He urged bikers to stop in his hometown
on the way home. “The local economy depends on it.”
Thune also
acknowledged Mayor Ziegler, a motorcyclist, who will leave his job in
September to become president of a university in Minnesota.
“They’re taking job applications for the mayor of Sturgis
right now,” Thune said, joking. “The job description now
reads ‘Must ride Harley.’ The next mayor’s going to
have big shoes to fill.”
Gov. Jon Huntsman
of Utah, who is a veteran dirt-bike rider, has been lobbying fellow
governors, including Rounds, for an early Western states primary.
“I think it would make us something other than a fly-over
region,” he said, in a short interview before the ceremony.
Rounds, who was
standing nearby, said he would consider the idea “as long as we
get more interest in Western states.”
Huntsman added,
“We need a critical mass.”
James Miller of
the Postal Service Board of Governors, got the most laughs Monday,
speaking in a folksy Southern drawl. “How many of y’all saw
me poppin’ wheelies out there today_” he asked. “Well
if you did, you’re on somethin.’ I don’t do wheelies.”
But he does ride,
and he explained how mail carriers used motorcycles as early as 1907.
He even quoted mail carrier Wallace Vance’s testimonial in a
1914 Harley-Davidson advertisement.
“I just
wanted to tell you what a rural carrier can do with one of your
machines in one week,” the ad read.
Here’s one
day’s entry:
“Monday: Ran
mail route 25 miles, then packed and rode 30 miles before
dinner.” (“Now that was back when it was breakfast, dinner,
supper,” Miller explained.) “Fished in the afternoon and
all day Tuesday.”
Miller said the
four motorcycles on the stamps were carefully chosen.
“They’re all classic examples of the freedom that
motorcycle travel gives us.”
The chopper on the
postage stamp is a graphic composite, but the motorcycles on the
other three stamps are real, and their owners were at the ceremony.
Penny Nickerson of
Long Island, N.Y., who owns the one-cylinder Cleveland, said Monday
that she got her first cell phone for the trip to Sturgis. She
traveled with her “significant other,” Charlie Bailey, whom
she called “the last living Cleveland mechanic.” A
spectator asked her if she rode the Cleveland to Sturgis. Nickerson
replied, “Oh, heavens! That would have taken six weeks!”
But the Cleveland does run.
Larry Spielfogel,
a New York City food wholesaler who also collects motorcycles, owns
the Indian. “It’s the Duisenberg of motorcycles, Spielfogel
said, meaning the four-cylinder bike was powerful and “two or
three times as expensive as any other bike.”
George Tsunis of
Port Jefferson, N.Y., rode his 1965 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide
across town to the event tent. “It started right up,” he
said. This motorcycle was the last of Harley-Davidson’s
“Panhead” bikes.
At 9:35 a.m., only
five minutes behind schedule, Mayor Zeigler and his wife, Gae, led
Rounds and 400 other motorcyclists for the ride to Crazy Horse
Memorial, then to Custer State Park for a barbecue.
The annual
Mayor’s Ride is a fundraiser for the Sturgis fire department.
Secretary
Kempthorne was riding a motorcycle loaned to him by Steve Oberg, a
South Dakota National Guard pilot who returned from Iraq in January.
“South Dakota, I know, has sent many of your sons and daughters
over there,” Kempthorne said.
Oberg, who flies
C-23 Sherpas, loaned the interior secretary a 2003 100th Anniversary
Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail.
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