International President 1997-2003 and Ellen Pfeiffer Award recipient 2007
By the mid 1980s, Louise Scherbyn was becoming overwhelmed by the task of running WIMA. The overseas divisions organised themselves and there was little contact between countries except at annual Rallies. I felt this must change – all WIMA members could benefit from increased communication. Everything was done by post, though around the early eighties, computers were beginning to appear in offices.
In 1997, the divisional captains decided to elect a new president. They chose me to lead them, and I received a letter from Theresa Wallach, congratulating me and wishing me good luck. My bike throughout these years was my Suzuki Bandit GSF 600cc which I’d fallen in love with during the WIMA visit to Japan that Yuko Sugeta and myself organised in 1996.
The president and founder controlled everything in the original WIMA constitution – I wanted a more democratic organisation, so some of us wrote a simple document which included giving each country one vote, no matter their size. That principle still remains. Floh Petit, the de facto German captain, became international treasurer and we charged half a euro per member. The fund we built up enabled us to make yearly contributions to FEMA (Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations). Throughout my time, Floh was there, working behind the scenes, translating proceedings into German at every rally.
We held two captains’ meetings at each rally. The first, on the Tuesday to discuss issues and make recommendations. On the Wednesday, national captains presented these to their country’s rally participants, and on the Thursday the captains met again and we voted on the issues. A celebratory dinner followed, organised by the host country.
Rowena Inzani, a WIMA GB member, created a website for us, and registered www.wimaworld.com. Suddenly WIMA was available to anybody in the world with access to the internet! We heard from countries where we had no contacts and where we didn’t even know that there were women riding bikes. We were thrilled to hear from little-known Estonia and from Japan when motorcycle journalist Yuko Sugeta started attending our rallies from 1993.
I dreamed of a revival of WIMA USA, so Pat Thomson and I went to the AMA Women & Motorcycling Conference in West Virginia, at our own expense, and found Alice Sexton. (See WIMA USA divisional report, 2009 USA rally report and former international officers section).
We introduced sub-committees. Rita Koopmanschap and others worked on a comprehensive constitution. With increased participation from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the USA, a new logo was needed. We invited logo designs from all divisions and the decision to choose the current oval logo was finally made during Rita’s time as international president. One last change I made, was to appoint the very efficient Doris Porter as vice-president as the WIMA workload had become too much. She started enthusiastically, but sadly died of cancer shortly afterwards.
WIMA has been an integral part of my life for over 40 years – I learned so much about other countries and WIMA communities during my six years as international president. WIMA has given me lifelong friends and my partner of 30 years Pat, without whose support I could never have managed this role. I shall always be grateful for the opportunity to make my contribution to this amazing organisation.
(2025)
Sheonagh was also a recipient of the Ellen Pfeiffer Award, along with Pat Thomson in 2007. Details can be found here…
