Larry Lawrence | March 10, 2020
Archives: The Happy Jack Club
Jack Mercer was one of the people most responsible for the growth of Triumph motorcycles in America during the 1950s. This was made evident in talking about Mercer to veterans of the trade who remember him. Mercer was a field rep, the last of an era of road warriors traveling the country setting up dealerships and doing whatever was needed to help existing shops sell more motorcycles and earn more profits, as well as establish new dealers. In the 1950s Triumph became a “cool” alternative to Harley-Davidson for motorcyclists, and for guys like Jack, a man who genuinely loved motorcycling and the people involved in the sport, it was a golden age. Jack enjoyed getting to know his dealers and cared about helping them in any way he could. Enthusiasts like Jack built an industry and helped set the stage for the motorcycling explosion of the ‘60s when baby boomers came of age.
Archives: The Happy Jack Club
Mercer was born in 1917 and raised in the North Bronx when the area was still rural. The Boston Post Road meandered past Jack’s childhood home and was still cobblestone. He was involved in motorcycling from a young age, along with his brother and dad, who worked for Con Edison. It was on two wheels that Jack first enjoyed getting to explore areas in and around rapidly growing New York City. Motorcycling became the fabric of Jack’s life. And on these rides Jack got to know fellow riders far and wide, among them were the very first generation of motorcyclists in America, so his knowledge of the pastime ran deep. This would serve him well.
One of Jack’s buddies was a motorcycle racer who was recovering at home after a crash. Jack, also had a spill on his bike, was on crutches and went to commiserate with his friend. There was a cute girl there watching the family’s children. The girl offered Jack a hot tea, because that’s what good Irish girls did in those days. Jack was reclining on a chair, injured leg propped up, when he made a wise crack. The girl didn’t take kindly to the remark and reacted by throwing a loaf of bread at Jack, which of course knocked over the hot tea onto his lap. “What a way to treat a cripple!” Jack joked. The pretty young Irish girl would eventually become Jack’s wife Eddy. The couple honeymooned by motorcycle, then, along with their girls Bonnie and Laurie, would go on to become one of the best-known families in motorcycle circles of the 1950s, traveling to races and motorcycle shows, helping dad sell subscriptions to British motorcycle magazines.
Jack’s first motorcycling job was working for BSA importer Alf Child.
Then, during WWII, Jack served a stint in the Navy and was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Livermore, California. There he survived a near fatal motorcycle accident after being hit by a drunk driver. It was in the Navy when Jack first took up photography. He would go on to become one of the leading motorcycle racing photographers of the 1950s, an early adopter of the 35mm format popularized by Leica, his camera of choice.
Shortly after the war was when Jack began his career at Triumph. His daughters said his job, combined with their mom’s strict adherence to saving money and investing, meant the Mercer family had a solid upper-middleclass upbringing. The family even vacationed in Europe and traveled around, much to the delight of the girls, in a motorcycle mounted with a double sidecar, courtesy of Triumph. The trip included a visit to the races at the Isle of Man.
The 1950s was a time of dynamic growth for Triumph in America and Jack was a major part of that. Triumph’s US headquarters moved from New York to Baltimore and the Mercers made the move. Jack’s life was all about motorcycling. When he wasn’t on the road working with dealerships, he was at a race photographing and reporting, while Eddy with the girls was in the pits doing whatever race-related work that needed to be done.
“I remember Daytona and the beach, going off and playing in the woods at Laconia,” youngest daughter Laurie remembers.
Jack was undoubtedly a people person. Bonnie said instead of staying in hotels on the road, he often stayed the homes of his Triumph dealers. “The cooking was so much better,” Laurie added. “He just loved to get to know people too. Often times he would take the dealer and their family out to dinner. And that was a special occasion back in those days. People didn’t go out to eat like they do today.”
The upshot of Jack’s friendliness, was that he seemed to instinctively know if a person might be successful as a Triumph dealer.
One example was a racer and mechanic from Elyria, Ohio, named Bill Kennedy. Kennedy met Jack at a race and asked if he could become a Triumph dealer. Jack saw, that even though Kennedy had little to no money he had desire. Jack was on his way to Chicago to set up a new dealership. He gave Kennedy a demo bike and told him if he could sell it before he came back, he’d set him up with a dealership. Two days later Jack returned, Bill had sold the bike and Jack set Bill and his wife Joan up as a Triumph dealer. That was the early 1960s – Kennedy’s Sport Cycle is still in business today.
Triumph recognized the talent they had in Jack. When you see photos of national Triumph meetings Jack is always front and center with the top executives of the company.
That made it even tougher on Jack when Triumph began struggling in the 1970s facing the onslaught of more technically advanced Japanese machines. Like a lot of the Triumph faithful, it was a painful time watching the company fall behind and never recover.
After Triumph, Jack worked for accessory company’s Beck/Arnley and then KK Motorcycle Supply, the company he worked for when he retired.
His customers loved Jack and dubbed him “Happy Jack”. Jack leaned into the nickname and took to giving out t-shirts to friends with an illustration of Jack with a beaming smile captioned “Official Member of the Happy Jack Club”.
Rick Moore, whose family owned a dealership in Indianapolis, recalls Jack showing his dad a new low-cost helmet and touting how much profit they could make selling them. “My dad agreed to buying 10 of them, but when the shipment came there were 100 helmets! My dad was mad, but you just couldn’t stay mad when it came to Jack.”
Jack passed away from cancer in 1988 at the age of 71.
Motorcyclists editor Bill Bagnall wrote of Jack, “He liked everybody, I’m sure that everybody whom he met liked him. They couldn’t help but be fascinated by his wit and sparkle.”
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You can read the digital edition of this story here: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1219692-cycle-news-2020-issue-10-march-10/126?m4=