One after another, leather-clad bikers duck in from the night chill and sidle up to the bar at the Peace Makers Motorcycle Club. They doff helmets, exchanging friendly jibes over the clink of cue balls and a rendition of "Me and Mrs. Jones" belted out by a female biker known as "Silver Fox."
When it's time to ride, the bikers stream outside. Some watch, others saddle up. Motors revving like thunder, the bikes roll up Straight Path in tight formation.
Tucked between an auto-parts store and a takeout Chinese joint near the Wyandanch train station, the biker clubhouse easily could be mistaken for a closed store. But everybody around town knows the Peace Makers, men and women whose love for their bikes is matched by their desire to help their neighbors.
The club was founded in the late 1970s by a handful of bikers who met at Evergreen Baptist Church in Huntington. They rode after services and eventually rented a clubhouse across the street from their current spot. When they helped build a playground at a local day care center, they became a Wyandanch fixture.
Now, the Peace Makers put on an annual children's carnival in June, invite down-on-their-luck locals to a home-cooked Thanksgiving spread at the clubhouse and deliver Christmas baskets with toys and clothing to those in need.
"We have helped a lot of people," said club president Gloria "Gee Gee" Green, a 61-year-old Wyandanch resident who maintains order at club meetings with a decisive thrust of an elaborately painted fingernail. "Sometimes, we never get a thank you. That's okay."
Turkey and camaraderie
The scene at the club's annual Thanksgiving meal is unlikely to be replicated in most soup kitchens. Last year, bikers lounged at the bar while drop-ins and guests the Peace Makers had picked up from local social services offices loaded plates with turkey, okra and macaroni salad from a buffet on the pool table. Afterward, a few boogied to R&B tunes while Green beckoned to worn-faced stragglers haunting the doorway.
Local leaders say members may look intimidating, but the group plays an important role in a hamlet with the lowest median income and highest poverty level in the Town of Babylon. "They're a great role model for the kids being preyed on by the criminal gangs out there," said Babylon supervisor Steve Bellone, who first met the club at a Wyandanch Day parade in the late 1990s. "In a community that doesn't have as many of those stabilizing forces as some communities do, the Peace Makers are really an institution."
Jeff Anderson, an unemployed Wyandanch carpenter, was staying on a friend's couch and trying to kick a drinking habit when he stopped by the clubhouse for turkey last year. "My perception of bikers is big, burly, tattooed, with bikes bigger than your bedrooms," Anderson said. "But these people do all kinds of community service. They're warm."
Do-gooding in no way precludes having a good time. The club's midnight-blue walls are crammed with photos of bikers and trophies from runs and out-of-state rallies; the centerpiece is the 14-seat bar. On karaoke nights and monthly birthday parties, Peace Makers and visiting bikers dance and laugh amid cigarette smoke and twinkling Christmas lights. For a $3 cover, anyone can partake of $3 beers, $4 mixed drinks and what members call some of the best company in Wyandanch.
The 29 Peace Makers include a truck driver, an insurance broker, a beautician, a computer teacher and a retired postmaster. Most are middle-aged and black, but the club's doors are open to all 25 and older - "We check IDs," said co-founder Charlie Ford - who respect club rules. "First of all, no drugs," Green said.
Members have two names, one they are born with and one they choose. Ford, a ladies' man from Huntington who, at 70, sports a vest patch that reads "Next to Sex I Love My Harley Best," goes by "Lonely One" because he once was the only unmarried Peace Maker. "P-Funk" - Hank Lloyd, 59, a court clerk from the Bronx - said he once hit a skunk on his Kawasaki Vulcan, and the funky smell stuck with him for days. Barber Pitts of Massapequa earned the moniker "Silver Fox" because of her thick, gray hair.
Female-friendly
Several female members say the Peace Makers' clubhouse is a spot where women can socialize, fights are rare, and they can count on club members to look after them. Mary "Honey Bee" Chandler, 52, and newly joined Jennifer "J-Love" Lucas, both of Amityville, don't even own motorcycles. For them, the club is mostly about community service and fellowship.
"We're like a family," said Lucas, 44. "Right now, I don't have a car, and if I need to get someplace, I could call on one of my members, and they would support me that way."
Loyalty runs deep among the Peace Makers, who have shouldered their share of burdens. In April, Green's granddaughter, 14-year-old Danielle Baker, was shot at a Sweet 16 party in North Amityville by an alleged gang member, devastating both Green and Danielle's father, Cordell Baker, who is Green's son and a Peace Maker known as "Baby Boy."
Together, through the life cycle
Six club members were pallbearers at the funeral; others brought food or checked in on the family for weeks. Now Green, who also heads the parent-teacher organization at Wyandanch High School, is putting together an anti-violence workshop. And the club might revive a teen night it once ran that offered food, music and tutors.
The Peace Makers are more than just a bike club, said Pastor Vincent Ferrante of Upper Room Ministries in neighboring Dix Hills. "They're there for their community, and they happen to ride bikes."
Staff writer Erik German contributed to this story.
