Early in his tenure leading the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association, Charlie St. Clair was almost constantly on the move, meeting with business owners in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region and traveling to biker gatherings around the country.
A pied piper on a motorcycle and on Amtrak — logging more than 25,000 miles by train in 1998 alone, he estimated — Mr. St. Clair led visitors back to New Hampshire from all 50 states. His tireless advocacy drew visitors from all of Canada’s provinces, too — along with motorcyclists from Europe and the Middle East.
“He went from one end of the country to the other promoting Laconia Motorcycle Week,” said his cousin Cynthia Makris, president of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association. “People knew him everywhere. He’s our homegrown Laconia hero.”
Mr. St. Clair was on his annual pilgrimage to the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota in August when the rear tire of his motorcycle blew out along Interstate 90 in Avon, Ohio. He was taken to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland and was 76 when he died on Aug. 22 of injuries from the accident.
In 1991, Mr. St. Clair began running motorcycle week, centered around the Weirs Beach area on the western side of Lake Winnipesaukee.
Within a few years of his leadership, the annual number of visitors quadrupled to about 225,000. That total continued to grow, a significant resurrection for New Hampshire event whose reputation and commercial attractiveness suffered after a mid-1960s riot brought numerous arrests.
“I grew up in Laconia, and motorcycle weekend was an exciting time,” he told The Boston Globe in 1998. “What happened in 1965 broke my heart. For us to be able to get back to what it was is the main thing.”
Known to many as just Bike Week, the rally became a major economic generator for the state under his leadership. “You couldn’t not see his passion for it, and it really was infectious,” Jennifer Anderson, deputy director of the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association, said of Mr. St. Clair’s devotion to the rally.
“It was his pride and joy,” Anderson said. “He was very passionate about it, which is why we have such great relationships with all of our partners and all of our sponsors.”
Part of Mr. St. Clair’s work over the past 35 years as executive director of the motorcycle association was making sure the event billed as the “World’s Oldest Motorcycle Rally” welcomed visitors and participants of all ages from all walks of life.
“This a rally where people come to enjoy themselves,” he told the Globe in 2003. “They are here on vacation.”
Events include memorial and scenic rides, motorcycle races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, live music, and outreach ministries.
At a Sept. 10 celebration of life, which included a motorcycle procession, Governor Kelly Ayotte said that “what makes New Hampshire such a fantastic state is people like Charlie St. Clair.”
Mr. St. Clair “was such an impact player for this state. He loved Laconia,” the governor said, according to an account of the gathering in The Laconia Daily Sun. “There wasn’t anything that happened in Laconia that he wasn’t involved with and promoting. And his work with Motorcycle Week was incredible.”
Along with leading the motorcycle association, Mr. St. Clair had served on Laconia’s Planning Board and was a state representative at the time of his death. He was active in organizations including the Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce, the Lakes Region Tourism Association, and the Weirs Action Committee.
An owner or operator of several businesses through the years, he ran the Laconia Antique Center, a 22,000-square-foot downtown operation.
His previous ventures included the Colorado Club restaurant and nightclub — he had finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“Charlie as a person was a kindhearted, special soul,” Makris said. “He was incredibly loyal — loyal to his family and his friends and to the motorcycle community. And he was very concerned about his beloved Laconia.”
She said his efforts promoting Bike Week’s 100th anniversary, in 2023, helped draw an estimated 420,000 visitors that year.
“Charlie really expanded it,” she said of the event’s reach. “It’s not just in Laconia. People fill up the whole state now, from North Conway to the Seacoast. We bring in over $100 million over those nine days into the state of New Hampshire.”
The third of five siblings, Charles Grant St. Clair was born in Laconia on April 16, 1950.
His parents were Richard H. St. Clair and Constance Salta St. Clair, who founded and ran businesses including Hathaway House in Laconia and The Old Country Store in Moultonborough, N.H.
Mr. St. Clair graduated from Laconia High School and initially attended Bryant and Stratton, a business college in Boston.
While there he helped lead a sit-in of nearly 500 students who occupied the school president’s office in May 1970 as part of nationwide college protests opposing the Vietnam War.
“We’re not radicals,” Mr. St. Clair told the Globe during the protest. But, he added, “we did think it was high time Bryant and Stratton got involved.”
He also was an activist after switching to the University of Colorado, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in education.
As a student union leader, “he was very much a change agent there,” Anderson said.
While leading the Laconia Motorcycle Week Association, Mr. St. Clair and Anderson became friends, colleagues, and confidantes over the years. “I was his person and he was mine,” she said.
In an obituary tribute, she wrote that “it is nearly impossible to capture Charlie’s life, his empathy, and generosity.”
Mr. St. Clair “was a historian, storyteller, motorcyclist, community leader, public servant, businessman, teacher, collector, pyrotechnic, television host, and friend.”
After college, he drove a Checker Cab in Boston for years, she said, and he told stories of how picking up fares during the 1978 blizzard brought a financial windfall.
Before returning to live in Laconia, Mr. St. Clair co-owned a video rental store in Brookline and attended law school, Anderson said, and his jobs along the way included teaching elementary school and putting on fireworks displays.
While in Boston he developed a fondness for $2 bills, which he handed out as change at his Laconia antique business.
On his bike, his look evolved through the years. His early ponytail disappeared, but what he wore heading west to the Sturgis motorcycle rally did not — though they also evolved.
“He wore the same riding clothes to Sturgis every year since 1976 and he is not the same sized man as he was in 1976,” Anderson said with a chuckle.
As he put on a few pounds, strategic tears appeared in the fabric and accommodating backing cloth was sewn in.
“When he does something, he does it and stays with it,” Anderson said. “He was not somebody who loved change. He loved tradition.”
The last surviving member of his immediate family, Mr. St. Clair leaves extended family, including nephews, nieces, and in-laws.
He also considered the motorcycle community, from locals to those in distant states and countries, to be part of his extended family.
“Charlie was very proud of the fact that motorcycle enthusiasts came from all over the world to the Laconia motorcycle rally,” Makris said. “He was the champion of it and wanted to be a treasure of New Hampshire.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.