 We are Anita and J.R. Alkire, and we are honored to be introducing ourselves as the new Region F Directors.
I am a southern California brat born and raised. I came to San Diego in 1970 when I attended San Diego State University. As a little freshman, who was a proud Marching Aztec playing flute and piccolo, I met and fell in love with the Band Manager, J.R. He was an older man (5 years) but I was smitten! But as life would have it, he was drafted into the Army, and I was left to find another. Well I did, and was married for 10 years and later divorced. I went to find my lost love. We connected, and a year later J.R. and I were married and have been married for the last 24 years.
J.R. was born in Rome, New York, but moved when he was two-years old to Oregon, Missouri, a very little town. He was raised on a farm until he was seven when his family relocated to San Diego. As a child, he was either riding a horse or riding a motorcycle. Everyone in his family rode bikes, including the dog.
J.R. and I have been involved with GWRRA since becoming Members in 1999. Our home Chapter is CA-1F in San Diego, California. Our first Chapter meeting was disguised as a July 4th party. As we listened at the Chapter meeting, one volunteer said she could no longer be the Dinner Ride Coordinator. I whispered to J.R., “Well, there you go, you can plan the rides, and I can call for reservations.” Well, the Chapter Director announced to the group that we had new Dinner Ride Coordinators, and that started our path with GWRRA (we hadn’t even received our membership cards yet).
We went on to become ACD’s and then CD’s. We were the 2001 Chapter Couple of the Year, a program that we think is awesome! We are dedicated to Rider Education even though we started out with J.R. not wanting any “stinkin’ patches”; he now wears them proudly including our Masters patches with the Senior patch above it. We have also become involved with Leadership Training as we were introduced to it by the Horizon Program. We have gone on to become Certified Instructors, and I just became a Master Instructor at Wing Ding in Tulsa. When we look for our favorite part of GWRRA it’s summed up in the motto “Friends for Fun, Safety, and Knowledge”. We love all our Friends, a Winger family of 74,000; we generate as much Fun as possible with everything we do; Safety is our dedication to Rider Education; and Knowledge is shared through our teaching of all of the GWRRA programs.
We are excited to move from the position of California District Directors to Region F Directors. What a fantastic “excuse” to ride through our beautiful Southwest! As District Directors, we made our tenure all about the Members with our slogan being “Making a Difference One Member at a Time”. We hope to get out and meet all of our Region Members. We know so many of you now that it is very exciting as we will be visiting friends. We look forward to getting to know as many of you as we can and to bringing loads of fun, new ideas to the Region. |
