Marketing, Motorcycles, and the Legend of the Lotus Blossom

IMPORTANT PRIZE INFORMATION ENCLOSED!
NOTICE OF IMMINENT WINNER SELECTION!
YOU MAY BE AN INSTANT WINNER!

All around Columbus, Ohio, business managers began receiving mock sweepstakes letters with bright bold letters scrawled across the envelope, declaring them to be the next big winners. Little did they know that one of them would become a lucky winner—of a young employee with a genius for marketing and a resourceful imagination.

After graduating with a major in organizational communication and a minor in marketing, Charissa Hopkins set out to impress her future employers with a resume that was out of the ordinary—in this case, resembling a sweepstakes letter. Soon afterwards, she received a phone call from a manager who had been fascinated by her resume and wanted to interview her. “491 West Broad Street” he told her. “Enter up the ramp.”

Puzzled but intrigued by these cryptic directions, Charissa went to meet him at 491 West Broad Street. When she arrived, she finally comprehended the manager’s instructions. All around her stood rows and rows of motorcycles. Motorcycles every color of the rainbow, gleaming in the sunlight, filling the lot around them. In a parking lot, of all places, was where Charissa found her first full-time job—assistant marketing manager for the Harley Davidson motorcycle dealership.

As it might be expected, working at a motorcycle dealership is not your normal everyday job. Although Charissa did not deal directly with the vehicles themselves, she had an important role in promoting the company and planning events such as motorcycle rides, concerts, and competitions. One memorable event she organized was a street luge race, where local daredevils careened down the crazy curvy roads in bizarre costumes. Charissa also made it a special goal to encourage women to become motorcyclists as well. She held Harley Fashion shows where women not only dressed up in leather jackets, heavy makeup, and motorcycle boots, but learned motorcycle jargon and how to pick up motorcycles when they fell over. Additionally, at the Race for the Cure—an event to raise money for breast cancer—Charissa decided to show people that tough as they were, motorcyclists cared too. When the day of the race began, 30 motorcyclists showed up wearing shirts with the words “Tough Enough to Care” printed on them. They tied pink streamers to their motorcycles and revved the engines as the runners passed by. Because of all the honking and roaring, that street was nicknamed “Thunder Alley.” The next year, the amount of motorcyclists that appeared for the event had grown in number by ten times!

“Thunder Alley”

One of the most unforgettable memories of Charissa’s time at Harley-Davidson was unraveling the story of Nellie Jo Gill. Rummaging around in the company’s headquarters, one day she and her coworkers found an old box of pictures, telegrams, and postcards. Fascinated by it all, they set out to discover the tale behind it. Once it was all pieced together, Charissa’s boss asked her to create a scrapbook of the story, and she eagerly obliged.

Their company in Columbus was said to be the oldest Harley-Davidson dealership in the United States, founded by A.D. Farrow in 1912. After he died in 1927, his wife Lillian took over the business. In a time when women did not own businesses, much less deal with motorcycles, she overcame the Great Depression and World War Two incredibly. She had a huge role in supplying motorcycles during the war, but what her sister Nellie Jo Gill did was even more astonishing. To get to a bowling tournament in Los Angeles, Nellie and a friend rode cross-country from Ohio to California on Route 40. Their motorcycle, dubbed the “Lotus Blossom,” bore them all the way to L.A. without fail, and they sent back loads of photos, postcards, and telegrams from their stops along the way. As the story goes, when the women reached their destination, they roared straight into the lobby of the bowling alley!

What’s amazing is that before Charissa discovered that old box, no one had heard of Nellie’s historic ride across the States. Now, however, the story is being spread everywhere. Because of her, Nellie and her friend are featured in Cristine Sommer Simmons’ book The American Motorcycle Girls 1900- 1950: A Photographic History of Early Women Motorcyclists.

One of the mottos that Charissa remembers hearing during her career was “The greatest part of any journey is the people you meet along the way.” Whether the journey is a motorcycle trip across the country, a fundraising race, or even the grand voyage of life, this saying is vastly true in many ways. In fact, though she now helps to organize the Columbus Marathon, Charissa still works for the same boss. After all those years, the manager who first interviewed her remembered her creativity and skill and asked her to become his assistant. Although it has been several years now since she has worked there, Charissa will never forget her time working at Columbus’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership.