At a New Year’s Eve party in Hollywood, Steve McQueen sidled up to his friend Mary McGee and started to make fun of her groundbreaking career racing motorcycles.
He reckoned her trundling around tracks at great speed wasn’t as pioneering or as dangerous as people were making out.
“McGee,” said the actor, “you’ve got to get off that pansy road racing bike and come out to the desert.”
“Ugh,” replied the 26-year-old woman. “And get all dirty?”
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Within weeks she was at the helm of a Honda CL 72, inhaling dust, winding through the Tehachapi Mountain trails alongside McQueen and his pals.
Not long after, they cajoled her into signing up for an Enduro team event at Jawbone Canyon in the Mojave Desert where she learned the hard way that going downhill on massive sand dunes required simply staying in third gear and shrugging off inevitable heavy falls. A quick student, she soon became one of the finest off-road racers in the world and was still competing deep into her 70s.
Last summer Martin Brundle was doing his celebrity walk-about shtick on the starting grid of the Canadian Grand Prix when he stopped at a silver-haired woman in a wheelchair. Not his usual fare. Getting down on one knee and talking softly, he introduced the 87-year-old to the millions watching as the first American woman to race motorbikes and cars, and very politely asked if this was her debut at a Formula One event.
In the charmingly blunt manner of the senescent, McGee’s deeply-lined face creased, and she scoffed feistily. “I was at Riverside many years ago for the first Formula One race, I met Jimmy Clark for god’s sake!”
She had been invited to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve by Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer of Motorcycle Mary, an ESPN documentary about her life that was released the day after her death last week. Way too short at 22 minutes long, it does manage to capture the essence of an extraordinary woman, an epic life.
In the opening interview, she leans into the camera to explain she had brought along the ring she received when inducted into the Motorcycling Hall of Fame, explaining, “There’s an inscription, it says, ‘drinks gas, spits nails’”. A bespectacled old dear in her dotage still breathing fire.
Born Mary Bernice Connor in Juneau, Alaska on December 12th, 1936, she and her older brother Jim were sent to live with grandparents in Harpers Ferry, Iowa during the second World War, for fear Japan might invade America’s most northerly state.
The family settled in Phoenix, Arizona in the late 1940s and it was there Jim began racing cars with some success. Having started out as his most enthusiastic supporter on the sidelines, her life changed forever the day he invited her to get behind the wheel and give it a go.
“I wanted to wet my pants, I was so scared,” she said. “After that, my motto was: ‘Always say yes if someone asks you to go somewhere or do something’.”
She married a mechanic and some early press clippings refer to Mrs Don B McGee. Others describe her as Jim Connor’s sister. Whatever they called her, she quickly showed enough talent to drive Porsche Spyders on the Sports Car Club of America circuit. After notching wins and national renown, she switched to two wheels and became the first woman licensed by the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM).
Wearing a distinctive pink and white polka dot helmet with Mary emblazoned on the front, she was the first American woman to road race motorcycles, to compete in motocross, and to finish the Baja 1,000, completing that off-road odyssey through the Mexican desert in a Datsun pickup.
In 1975, driving a Husqvarna motorbike, she became the first solo entrant of either sex to finish the Baja 500, despite having no working rear shocks for half the race. A singular feat of endurance, the organisers somehow thought better of recognising the achievement because of her gender. A story of its time.
The environment in which she competed could be primitive, summed up by a newspaper profile which had the strap, ‘A ‘woman driver’ who can really drive’, beneath her photograph.
Others were more positive about her impact. Motor Trend magazine once advised: “So ladies, if your life is dull and you are bored with freeway traffic, don’t give up. Buy a motorcycle and join Mary McGee”.
In a corner of the Mojave Desert where she first embraced the thrill of off-road, the lure of the dust, a sisterhood of women bikers came together recently for an annual three-day camp-out called ‘Babes in the Dirt’. As part of this year’s festivities, an open-air showing of Motorcycle Mary culminated in hundreds of women revving their engines and chanting her name, paying impromptu homage to the trailblazer who literally carved a trail for all of them.
“As we all cheer, I realise I’m crying,” wrote Alyssa Roenigk, in an evocative essay for ESPN.com about the contribution of the woman they honoured.
“I’ve been crying. On this night, in this place, surrounded by these women and at a time when an undercurrent of unease runs through our lives, McGee is an adrenaline drip of hope and joy flowing straight to our hearts. We all owe something to McGee and the women who followed her lead, twisted the throttle and sped ahead.”
Drinking gas. Spitting nails.
