Dudley Perkins (motorcyclist)
American motorcycle racer (1893–1978)
Dudley B. Perkins (May 19, 1893 – February 26, 1978
) was an American champion motorcycle hillclimb competitor and Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealer. The American Motorcyclist Association's highest award, the AMA Dud Perkins Lifetime Achievement Award, was named after him in 1970, and he was its first recipient.
Early years
Perkins was born in Kern, California, now a part of Bakersfield, California. He began riding motorcycles in 1907 when attending school in Los Angeles. A neighbor offered to let him ride his Reading-Standard motorcycle, and Perkins was "quite thrilled."
Beginning of motorcycle career
After his family moved to Stockton, California, Perkins began working part-time for an Indian motorcycle dealer while still a student. He first competed on May 10, 1911, winning a one-mile race. After his stepmother died, Perkins went to live with his grandmother in Rocklin, California, where he rode an Excelsior motorcycle. Later, he moved to live with his father in San Francisco, and began hanging around at the local Indian dealership, later working there. He continued racing his Excelsior with success.
Harley-Davidson dealer
In 1913, Perkins entered into a partnership with Al Maggini, then a San Francisco dealer for DeLuxe motorcycles.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dudley Perkins (motorcyclist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.