| March 27, 2022
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
Sewing Leathers of the Stars
By Gerald Foster
Writer Gerald Foster and Motion Pro CEO Chris Carter recently penned the book When Honda Went Dirt Track Racing, which has attracted a lot of attention. The book got so heavy with content (it weighs over seven pounds), it was decided to put the overflow content on Motion Pro’s website. This interview with Dee Johnson is just one of those gems of dirt-track history.
In addition to being a successful businesswoman whose work has been worn by dirt-track racers for five decades, Dee Johnson is also Randy Goss’s mother-in-law. Goss is featured in the book, and Johnson made his and Doug Chandler’s leathers when they rode for Freddie Spencer’s SuperTrapp Honda team. The six degrees of separation between the racers, their families and the race scene of the era led Foster to interview Johnson, who almost single-handedly produced an amazing number of dirt-track race suits.
Dee Johnson of D’s Leathers made racing leathers for many of the top stars, such as Jay Springsteen, son-in-law Randy Goss and Corky Keener. There were many, many others.
So, you are the Dee in D’s Leathers?
Yes, sir. I am Dee Johnson.
You’re retired now but made dirt track leathers for 50 years. Is that correct?
Yes, and the only reason I retired was because I had a detached retina in one eye, and I don’t have much depth perception anymore, so I couldn’t see to sew. I don’t have an exact count, but I’ve made somewhere between four and five thousand sets of leathers in 50 years. Back in the day, I was making 80 to 100 sets a year. The last suit I made was for a kid named Rob Williams (#12 and 54), and he waited almost a year for it. I had four eye surgeries during that time, and a suit that would normally have taken me two days to complete took two and a half weeks. That’s when I decided I couldn’t do this anymore.
How did you initially get into the dirt track leathers business?
My husband, Larry, was racing enduros here in Ohio and all over the U.S. We lived in Toledo, and then we moved to Michigan. Our new neighbor raced short track, and Larry went with him to see what that was about and decided it was what he wanted to do. He needed a set of leathers, but back then we had three little girls and couldn’t afford $150–200 for leathers, so I said I’d make him a set.
It took me about a month; I made a cloth pattern and every day when he came home from work, I’d have him try it on to check the fit. I also borrowed a set of leathers from a friend, Rick Deye, to see how they were constructed, and then I went to Tandy Leather in Toledo and bought the leather. Back then leathers were pretty much all black, and I didn’t like that, so I made the jacket suede-out while the sleeves and the pants were black. I didn’t have enough money to buy another hide of white leather to make the stripes on the sleeves, so I made those out of vinyl. Then Larry painted his bike to match, and we went to the first race—a little short track at the Travelers Motorcycle Club in Toledo.
And Larry and his leathers attracted a lot of attention?
I mean, everybody wanted to know where he had them made, and I didn’t realize it was any big deal. I was a dental technician, and I had a good job, so I wasn’t really planning on going into business making leathers.
What changed your mind?
Our neighbor, Kenny Peckham, wanted a set, and I said, “Okay, I’ll make you a set for the cost of the fabric, and if anybody asks you who made them, you can tell them it was me.” And so that’s how I basically got started.
We used to go up to Auto City just ten miles north of Flint, Michigan, every Friday night. It was only an hour and a half drive from home, and Larry raced there. We were good friends with Bart Markel and his wife, JoAnn, also Neil Keen and Corky Keener, and we all hung around together. Back in those days, you could race the whole weekend if you were prepared to travel some—and we did. And when Bart and Neil saw Larry’s leathers, they suggested I go out to California and meet Wanda Pico.
Wanda Pico lived in Los Angeles and made race leathers in the ’50s and ’60s, didn’t she?
Yes, she and her husband, Ernie, who owned a motorcycle store after World War II for a while, lived in Inglewood. I went to see my parents in San Jose, then I took a flight down to Los Angeles and met them both.
Wanda had been out of the business about seven years and was looking for someone to teach, and somehow, I was the lucky one. She was kind of impressed with my making all the clothes my girls and husband wore.
They gave me everything—including the sewing machine Wanda used. All this was way before the internet, so she told me where to buy leather and zippers and thread—all the stuff that I would need.
Wanda and Ernie were the first people to make dyed colored-leather race suits. She was ahead of her time, and she also knew how to make patterns—something I had no idea how to do. So, she gave me a notebook and pen, and I spent three days writing down everything she told me. Everything Wanda shared with me, along with the gift of her sewing machine, got me started making leathers for real. Larry sold his boat and a few other things for enough money to get me started buying leather hides, plus more supplies, and we were in business.
Do you still have the sewing machine?
Yes, Ernie shipped it and everything else she gave me back to Ohio. It was the only machine I ever used for fifty years!
You mentioned that a neighbor was your second customer. Do you remember where it went from there?
My third customer was Corky Keener (#62), who raced as an amateur with Larry. Corky had done his national service and lost his professional license. He got it back, and his talent was noticed by Harley-Davidson, who hired him for the factory team. He asked me to make his leathers.
Harley-Davidson didn’t already have a company under contract that made the factory leathers?
No, each rider could have anyone make their leathers. And I think there were only two factory riders I didn’t make leathers for. So, at first, I was really nervous, but because Wanda made all the early factory leathers and gave me all the info on how to make the swoops, and the little waist band, and the stripe on the pants, I knew what was wanted.
What is a swoop?
The old-style Harley suits, which they had forever—except for maybe the last 10 years or so—had a little dip around the neck and a small waistband, and the black pants with the white stripe up the leg. They were all the same.
Sorry for the interruption. You were saying about Corky’s leathers . . .
Well, I finished the leathers, and we went to Houston for the February Astrodome races, and I met Harley’s race manager, Dick O’Brien, and gave him the bill for Corky’s leathers. He said, “Where’s the rest of it?” I said that’s it. He was obviously happy with the quality and the price, and I made the Harley factory riders’ leathers for a lot of years. I did a lot of leathers for their test teams, too, but they would send me a purchase order for those.
One thing I’d like to add is that when I made Corky’s suit, he saw it and said, “Dee, you got to put a logo on there.” I said I didn’t know how to design a logo.
He said, “Well, you know, there’s ABC (Custom Leathers) and now there’s D. Make it D’s.” And that’s how “D-apostrophe-s” became my logo.
Did you ever make leathers for the Honda factory team when Ricky Graham and Bubba Shobert were the riders?
Never did. Not that I wouldn’t have, but they never approached me.
But you made leathers for privateers riding Hondas?
Oh, yes. Steve Morehead, Ronnie Jones, Tim Mertens and more. I also made Randy’s and Doug Chandler’s when they rode for Freddie Spencer’s Honda team in 1985.
Scott Parker was one of Johnson’s best customers.
Randy Goss is your son-in-law. Correct?
My eldest daughter, Vicky, and Randy have been married for 43 years.
Small world, isn’t it!
Kind of is, isn’t it? Their daughter, Janice, is also married to a racer, NASCAR driver Aric Almirola, and they have a son and a daughter.
And they met when Randy was a NASCAR crew chief on the Jack Roush truck team after he retired from motorcycle racing?
Yes, Janice would go to the races with Randy and got to know Aric there.
Did you ever make one-piece road-race leathers?
I think in the beginning I made two sets, but I got so busy with dirt track orders that I didn’t take any more orders. I never had a helper. I was doing everything myself, except cutting the letters and numbers, which my Vicky took on because she was so very, very good at it. She’d sit at the kitchen table with a razor blade for hours carefully making sure each letter or number was perfect.
How old was she when she was slaving away for you in the kitchen?
Well, she was probably a young teenager.
Nowadays if she did that, you would probably be charged with child cruelty and endangerment.
I know, I was a terrible mom! (laughing) Funny how a family working together now would be a criminal offense, isn’t it?
Since you made so many sets of leathers over the years, several your customers must not have been local. How did you manage the measuring situation?
I’d say maybe three-quarters of all the suits I made were long-distance orders. So, I’d instruct the guys, or their wives or girlfriends, over the phone on how to measure themselves. Height and weight were the first items I needed. Did they drink beer? What size jeans did they wear? Did they wrestle? If they drank beer and told me their jeans waist size, I added two inches and shortened the length by two inches. And that would pretty much tell me everything I needed to know. Men are a real standard shape, and after about 10 minutes on the phone with a man, I could make a set of leathers that fit him perfectly. I guess I was blessed to be able to do that. I could never have done that with women. And thanks to Wanda and her magical patterns, I never had to alter a suit that I made.
Was your mother a seamstress and did you learn to sew from her?
My adopted mother sewed, and I found that with her instruction and help it just came naturally. With three young girls, I was constantly making dresses for them, then I began making shirts for my husband and ultimately suits. Moving to making race leathers wasn’t such a big deal once Wanda entered the picture and gave me some pointers.
Can you tell us about buying leather?
With starting my business from scratch, this was quite a learning process. Any tannery expects you to buy a certain number of sheets if you want the wholesale price. A sheet is half a hide, about 23 to 27 square feet, and a thousand sheets was a minimum order. Larry selling his boat, God bless him, was the seed money we needed to buy leather and supplies.
I always stuck with basic colors that I knew I would be using: black, red, white, yellow, blue, and some orange for the Harley leathers. At first, I bought from a tannery in Massachusetts until they closed, then for a long time I was buying beautiful leather from Canada, but the company kept upping the quantity on me, so I had to move on. Over time I bought leather from various tanneries around the U.S., including Wisconsin, Goliger Leather in Los Angeles, and the Hide House in Napa, but I only ever bought quality cowhide leather. And I never bought leather from South America because it smelled. It had something to do with the liquid they used in the tanning process.
How much leather did it take to make a suit?
Pretty much a full hide. If it was a large hide, there’d be some pieces left over that could be used on a different suit.
Did you and Larry ever sponsor a rider?
We sponsored a Junior named Randy Raker. He had some talent and was riding a Yamaha that was breaking fairly often, so Larry was helping him prepare his bike in our garage. He needed something better to ride, and I saw a Harley XR750 for sale in Cycle News in probably 1978. I called the guy and told him I was driving over to buy it. It was in Indiana, and I used Neil Keen’s and Bart Markel’s names to impress on him that I just wasn’t some crazy woman calling. And it worked! He said the bike was mine! I went out to the garage, where both Larry and Randy were working on his bike, and said, “Load up the trailer, guys, we gotta make a trip.” I didn’t tell either of them we were buying an XR for Randy to ride, and both of them were surprised when we picked up the bike.
How long did you sponsor Randy Raker?
It was two years, then Steve Morehead rode the XR for the next six or seven years. Larry had retired from his regular job by then and was building engines and bikes, including the one Steve rode.
Do you go to the races anymore?
Very occasionally anymore, and it’s usually local or vintage racing. I am amazed, though, at how many people still recognize me. But now, they are the children of the fathers I knew and made suits for back in the day, and they now have their own children who they bring to the races. Back then our house was open to all and we had numerous racers, plus up-and-coming kids—plus their families—stay two or three days. Ricky Graham and his wife, Leeza, even stayed with us. We’ve made a lot of friends over the years, and it makes me happy that they remember us even if it’s only an email or a card at Christmas.
Last question. Were you a Harley or a Honda fan?
I really didn’t take real notice of the bikes at the races. I was more interested in how the riders we cheered for were doing. I will tell you, though, that I told Larry that if I get sick, really sick, and you don’t think I’m going to make it, just bring a XR Harley underneath the bedroom window and rev it, then I’ll make it through. I love that sound, I really do. CN
