John Allen, telephone conversation with Morgan Groves

He was looking to make a change in his work life. Just about when he was about to look in the private sector, the Bicycle Manufacturers' Association announced that it would fund a national office to get the League to grow. The BMA was looking for a consumer organization friendly to its interests, gave a grant of about $50K. 1973 was Groves's first year with the League,

The Bill Boston Bicycle on the Classic Bike Rendezvous web site is Grovess. Groves was interested in finding a good bicycle, was taller and heavier than the average rider. He ordered and got the bike about 1975. Groves's bicycling was mostly touring. He has toured since he left LAW, did RAGBRAI, solo toured in Wisconsin and along the Mississippi from the Quad Cities to Hannibal.

What are Groves's critics getting at? What they may be getting at is that there was no strong club structure outside the upper Midwest and New England. There was some club activity in California and maybe St. Louis. The view that long-time League people had was to build an association of clubs. His view was to look to build a mass organization, not necessarily with club structure, not necessarily from clubs, but with as many members as possible from new bicycle purchasers. For the failure of this effort, he would fault Schwinn, which had an inept ad agency. He had indicates that he good reasons to believe that a mass organization could be built, because that had happened in the 19th century. But then bicycling touched a different population, wealthy hobbyists, and there was the political movement for good roads. At the turn of the century, the hobbyists turned to motorists.

From the 1970s to 2000, many things have changed in the bicycling field. Bicycle racing has expanded and the US has become aa world power in it. There are now additional bicycling sports of mountain bicycling and BMX -- going through the sports channels, Groves sees lots of BMX. The cost of bicycles for these sports has become astronomical. The replacement cost for his Bill Boston bicyclde would be around $4000. Why buy this kind of bicycle? We would like to travel around in comfort, like buying a Rolls Royce, not a Ferrari. But with EBay you can keep an old bike going.

Groves owned a bike shop in DeKalb, Il, 1980-1987. He has acquired bikes of collector quality since leaving LAW, He still has the Bill Boston. He had a Rene Herse, as a riding machine. and is ashamed to say how much he sold it for, 10 times what he paid for it. The original wheels with Maxicar hubs, first good hubs with sealed bearings, and the Herse crankset, really Stronlight with a Herse label went for $1200, the rest of bike for several thousand.

Groves has changed his thoughts and assessments of his League service over the years.

Phyllis Harmon was his chief advocate when he was hired. The elected Board of Directors was given authority as his supervisors. Phyllis worked at home. After the first year or so, with adoption of a constitution and Bylaws providing for regional representation, Board and delegates would pursue programs, tell him and staff what to do.

He drafted a lot of the early program recommendations with help from people in the League and industry. The thrust of them was maintain rights to the roads and trails. This was not as unforgiving as with people who were adamant like the NRA about road rights.

Opposition to Groves came from people in the Chicago area and New York areas who had been pretty tight with each other and did not want to see power taken away. The economy was in decline and there wasn't the impetus to bring members in. Groves came into conflict with Harmon: she had edited the bulletin for a number of years and began to draw a salary of $10K per year a year or so before he came on board. She began to talk with people about "goofy" things he was doing. There was a lot of sniping behind backs.

Schwinn wanted her out of the picture. Keith Kingbay, who worked for Schwinn, was an impressive fellow but self-absorbed. He became an enemy of Groves. Around the end of 1975, the Board had asked Groves to fire Harmon and hire a pro to edit. Between the time the Board made the decision and, later, had a phone conference, Phyllis was probably politicking. If the Board reversed themselves, he would resign.

Some blamed him for extravagant expenses, he doesn't think that's fair. There was an issue of getting a word processor. Groves saw it as the wave of the future. He blames himself for the expense of that and also would cite problems with Schwinn's developing the advertising campaign for the League ' this would have put hangtags and elaborate material on bikes Schwinn sold, but Schwinn never got around to it.

Another thing that irritated Harmon and other older people was that newer people came in and there was conflict. Inherently, they were working for themselves. One man came up with plan for Schwinn to provide 50 bikes for downtown Chicago area, seemed to be more of a self-promoter.

Groves rarely buys a bicycling magazine any more. Buys racing magazines, son now is 46, won a team time trial.

Anecdotal insight: when he came up with the interview with industry and League people was ironically when Willard Harmon had pancreatic cancer, Groves had colon cancer, and from the first of July 1975 through first of September, was on limited duty.

Groves was able to work through it pretty well, basically in excellent health otherwise, went to see a counselor (clinical), worried about what his health problems might portend for his children. He left the office in the hands of a young college student. She could handle membership, bookkeeping, payments pretty well on her own. Groves and family took a driving trip aorund Lake Michigan in August 1975, all the time Willard Harmon was getting in worse shape, and soon died of pancreatic cancer. From that time on there was no significant interaction between Phyllis Harmon and Groves.

Backing up ' at the LAW convention in Dallas-Fort Worth, May-June 1975, Groves walked by accident into a meeting of the board's Executive Committee. A person he didn't know -- Darrow Glockner -- said that Groves had solicited a bribe to buy materials from him. Groves's recollection of Glockner was that had met him once for about 10 minutes. Glockner had promo materials, caps, T shirts, patches. Groves was furious about the accusation. He approached Harmon about it because he knew that she had had some relationship with Glockner. Groves left the convention with angry feelings about this, went to a lawyer to see whether he could sue Glockner for libel, but was told that such cases rarely succeed.

From the convention in June through the cancer time and parting of ways at Thanksgiving was a tense time. The people who had to take over when he resigned, about the only thing they (verb?) was the financial difficulties they were in. Groves admits that he wasn't flawless in his judgment about that. There was a guy at Schwinn named Ray Burch ' good man. Groves suggests reading the book about decline and fall of Schwinn.

Menninger was president of the League around this time.

John Forester doesn't put Groves in the same category as Harmon. Groves doesn't know about Forester's direct challenges to the proposed CPSC regulations.

Groves became a member of NCUTLO in early in 1974, an organization that seems to have had a lot of influence over the years. For example in 1974,l motorcycle helmet laws were almost universally in place, have since been stripped in most states. Industry, powers that be, lobbyists look to exert a lot of authority. 3M promoted a reflective bicycle tire sidewall to get written into safety regulations. Groves got into a real tirade on that in NCUTLO. The regulation 3M proposed would have excluded anyone but them. 3M would be very happy to bring me up to their test campus and wine and dine people.

One thing that was a big issue was that the League's IRS classification wasn't what it should be, should have been a 501C3, with rights to take part in the legislative process. The League was a 501C7, or maybe 6. C3 regulations were much looser.

Groves is kind of a political junkie, participates in political forums online. He no longer deals with libertarian people, is frustrated with them. NRA can't see the logical leap between having a hunting rifle and a bazooka. If you are going to take a hard-line view there isn't that much more to talk about. Hard-core libertarians regard global climate warming as a hoax and, meatless school-lunch Mondays as fascism taking over school kids' diet. There has been reaction to the nanny state going back to requirements for seat belts in cars, people see product quality requirements as an impingement on their own liberty. He has been reading in politics since left the LAW, would hope that the challenge of the right wing would get some community organizers of the caliber of Dan Burden to come together with a plan with a bit more teeth in it.

Libertarian issues bear on bicycling advocacy in terms of helmets, lanes.

Groves can't cycle from his own home 10 miles out of town into town without jumping through some hoops. But there are miles and miles of off-road MTB trails in the Austin area.

Did Groves give the League membership list to Dan Burden, as Phyllis Harmon states? Probably would have if Burden had asked. (But on the other hand, had the League already published a membership directory?) Groves did show Burden the leadership structure, but that was no secret. Some of the older people were very secretive about their membership and publication distribution data. At a meeting in Atlanta (?), people thought 15000 but it was 6500. When Groves revealed the real membership numbers, Harmon was livid. Groves had "made the mistake of tangling with a mother tiger protecting her cubs.' (Plus 'a change ' inflated membership numbers continue to be put forth).

So many years later, Groves can forgive Harmon but not abide her. Working for the League was a learning experience for him; he had worked as a Methodist minister and as a community organizer. A wrong step can tear apart a coalition, but he also was able to keep a working coalition going. He spent some years feeling pretty crummy about it.

He looks now at the Web site and feels generally pleased that he had some part in starting that: lifelong friends, Fred DeLong, Burch, Jay Townley. Dan Burden. Groves thinks that Burden probably could do more to make cities work on a human scale that a dozen Foresters.

Groves and Forester were at a NCUTLO meeting. Groves left in a car and saw Forester ahead in an intersection. 'His actual riding behavior was pretty bad.' Their relationships have been cordial over the years. There was never personal animosity between them.

Forester had a first-rate idea but needed the temperance of someone like DeLong, who had been doing things like this right back through the 1950s. Forester comes in with his engineering attitudes and new ideas and it just doesn't work. Groves tried some things with a post office employees' parking lot when had the bike shop. People could see videos of themselves riding, get helful hints. Everyday events got in the way of this and Groves didn't pursue it. Groves and friends (?) did everything they could to promote social events, bike shop events. To mount a campaign now, he would go to the bike shop owners, would have them run promotional and organizational events for the League, rather than clubs.

Groves is a member of the Richardson club, got its coverage area expanded. Then there were more members form Dallas than Richardson. Some of them agitated to change the club's name name to Dallas Cyclists. One of the guys who got him into the club ranted for an hour that if they would change the name, that was their club. Groves was soon out of there and working for LAW.

Harmon and a small coterie of her friends were the League from the late 1930s through the late 60s. They imagined their wonderful situation in the Midwest to spread all over the USA. But the whole USA isn't like that.

Some very good people wanted to see improvements to the League-- liability insurance, promotion of trails, recreational opportunities. A lot of those people are still working. If someone really smart and with a free hand from the League could go around and talk to these people, that would be the community-organizing approach he would like to see. He is not currently a League member -- more likely to be involved in habitat or yellow bike project. He certainly will be looking up the League Web site to see what the League is doing. He respected Bill Hoffman considerably, regards him as level-headed, not given to histrionics, someone who could see things clearly.

He had had more opportunities than he could schedule to meet with highway and transportation people -- Dan Burden could get through to anyone.