Thanks to everyone that offered assistance in my quest to find the American that apprenticed at Johnny Berry's shop in Manchester, England. I did have a great conversation with Alan Woods (the guy I asked the CR list if anyone knew who he was) and I finally learned from him the name of that American that apprenticed there during the summer of 1973. I've wanted to know this for 32 years. He recalled his name as David Howard a racer from Long Beach California. He remembers racing with/against him in the early 70's. Does this name ring a bell with anyone?
I met Johnny Berry only once on a summer day (probably middle July) in his bicycle shop in Manchester in 1974. It was a life changing moment for me. He showed me the fancy lugged frame he made in 1953 - which I thought was the nicest frame I had ever seen. During that visit, he also told me about an American that had lived with him and Ida for the summer learning to buil d bicycle frames. He took some time describing this experience. That conversation was the motivation to write him a letter as soon as I got back to the States asking him to let me have that opportunity too. Actually I had traveled around England a lot before this meeting looking for a good place to learn to build frames. I visited many framebuilders over a period of several summers but this conversation was the tipping point. I remember he told me about making the bicycle on which Audrey McElmury won the world championship race in 1969 (Alan says that bicycle is now in the Museum of Sport in San Diego). He also said something about making frames for Reg Harris but unfortunately I've forgotten the details of what he actually did make for him.
When I got home, I did write him that begging letter. I took a long time t o craft it. I was a high school teacher at the time and wasn't really planning to change jobs just adding skills to my knowledge base so I could teach that as well. He never answered so a month later I wrote to my secon d choice - or maybe I should say choice one and a half - Jack Briggs. I was really, really impressed when I toured of their framebuilding facility. I didn't hear back from him either so sometime later I wrote both of them again taking even more time to carefully word my pleas. And then I waited some more, months actually. Skipping the details of which make a good testimonial in church, I came home from teaching school one day in February confident that I would finally get my answers and I was not disappointed. I opened my mailbox to find 2 letters from England inside. One from Mrs. Berry saying she was sorry, Johnny had died in December and the other one written by Mrs. Briggs saying sure, come one over. I was indeed fortunate. At Cirque a couple of years ago, Richard Sachs told me he still has his rejection letter from them. It was a wonderful place to learn.
That next summer while at Briggs, I drove my Morris Minor (It cost me 50 £ and had big Snoopy cartoon characters stuck to the sides) over the Pennines from Bradford to Manchester and met Mrs. Berry to arrange getting the substance of his frame shop for myself. A shipping company put it all in a huge wooden box that weighed a ton - no kidding, a real 2000 lb ton. I also brought back that masterpiece of a frame. Since then I've acquired a lot of other framebuilding equipment but his bench vise is the vise I use everyday and his 3' X 4' alignment table is the one I build off of too. Johnny just had more specialized framebuilding equipment than most other British builders I visited. It is obvious from looking at it that he was a perfectionist with a goal of building the best not the fastest way. I've wondered ever since then what methods he used on this equipment I have. Just last night I got a substantial clue to that answer. Mrs. Berry said h e was always thinking about the process and would bring his work upstairs to the living quarters to admire when he was finished for the evening (I do that myself too, it's really nice work :).
Ellis Briggs also painted frames on their premises so I was very fortunate to have learned those procedures there as well. I think both of those places made better frames than most others partly because their shops were not financially dependent on building alone but were just part of a bigger operation. That allowed them to take time to finish them they way they wanted rather than turn out the numbers to make a profit.
Doug Fattic - getting closer to some of the mysteries of framebuilding in Niles, Michigan