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Riding off With a Legacy By Kate St. Vincent Vogl
When I met Linda Back McKay through the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, I was new to writing, and she had several books published. Yet she asked about my manuscript. Connected me with her publisher. Many times in many ways she guided me through the years. We celebrated her wins, too, like when she got the book contract of her dreams. Given the chance to work with the personal photos of the woman who founded the first stand-alone women-only motorcycle association, she said yes. Turned out the founder of the Women’s International Motorcycle Association (WIMA) also encouraged her followers to say yes to motorcycle riding and the thrill of independence. No other woman in Rochester rode solo when Louise Scherbyn first wheeled her Scout onto the gravel of Maiden Lane during the Depression. When Linda found out she had brain cancer, I did what felt right. She needed guidance developing Scherbyn's narrative, something she'd never needed before. And in the fall of 2019, from her hospice bed, my friend handed over her whole manuscript.
Many photos we'd had to pull; the women's names and meeting places weren't identified, as the publisher required. Without matching up why and where these motorcycling pioneers had traveled, we didn't have a story. Neither museum housing Scherbyn's cycles and papers held the answers. Linda had gone looking between treatments. On the way to Waterloo, she'd met up with a woman who'd recognized her mother in a photo Linda posted on Facebook. The mom had been one of the kids looking up to Scherbyn at a rally. Scherbyn had once belonged to the same motorcycle club auxiliary as the older women in the family, so the daughter brought Linda to the Newark clubhouse. A 1939 photo of Scherbyn hung on the wall.
"And in the fall of 2019, from her hospice bed, my friend handed over her whole manuscript."
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It was clear this story about women breaking barriers was bigger than either of us. I promised to see it through. That spring I sorted out what we had and what we needed, scrolling through hundreds of black and whites from Scherbyn's extensive collection.
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MARCH 2024
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