FIRST PERSON/OPINION

Via e-mail:

My pal and great friend and ambassador to motorcycling and racing Loyal George Truesdale III passed last month at age 70. We are having a memorial service and fund raising for him November 7th at his nephew Loyal’s restaurant, The Las Palmas Hollywood, at 2:00 p.m., www.laspalmashollywood.com, 1714 Las Palmas Ave.,Hollywood Ca 90028, (323)464-0171.

Loyal was involved in motorcycling and road racing since the mid-1960s when he and his pal Walt Richie raced the 12-hour at Willow Springs. I’m not even sure they had an organizing body back then, but I know they were still using Le Mans starts. He was later involved with Cliff Carr and Gary Nixon via Racecrafters and Kerker. He was at the birth of Superbike racing in the 1970s with Carr and Steve McLaughlin and in the early 1980s he started The Little La Carrera road race between Ensenada and San Felipe, Mexico on a “closed” highway on which the likes of Gary Nixon, Mark Brelsford and others had the time of their lives. That evolved into the resurrection of the PanAmericana La Carrera in 1988, and Loyal he was the American coordinator for years.

The list of friends and adventures in the motorcycle and car racing world would fill a book (which is not a bad idea) and many will be attending to celebrate his life and tell stories of their Loyalazations and most will be true with photographs and eyewitnesses. One of the most famous was a Cycle News send-up of the Burt Reynolds Cosmo centerfold by posing Loyal nude in bed with a Harley-Davidson, published as a centerfold.

Loyal had always hoped he would run out of money and life at the same time and he accomplished that. So we are having the goodbye party/liars club/fund-raiser and selling some of the memorabilia he collected over the years and Pan Americana items at the memorial to help out his family with a few loose ends he left behind.

You guys are certainly invited and I hope you can come.

Christopher Nugent Crystal Lake, Illinois 815-451-6339 [email protected]