John Parham, founder of J&P Cycles, died April 20, 2017. He was 62 years old, and passed away after a long fight with pulmonary fibrosis.
Parham founded J&P Cycles in 1979 with his wife Jill. The combination of retail stores and a mail order business meant J&P Cycles helped motorcyclists all over the world support their hobby. He also shared his passion by showing his private motorcycle collection (one of the world’s largest, with over 300 vehicles) at the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa.
Parham is a member of both the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame. He organized a huge number of motorcycle events throughout his lifetime and was always thrilled to share his love for motorcycling, both with the public and with his employees at J&P Cycles. One employee recalled, “I walked up to John and said thank you for making J&P Cycles. This job has changed and saved my life. He looked at me and just simply said ‘thank you.’ After that every time I’d run into him throughout the years he remembered me and thanked me for working for J&P Cycles. What a class act.”
The motorcycling community will miss Parham’s passion, enthusiasm and extensive knowledge of motorcycles and motorcycle culture.
In the next 10 years many of those well known names will be no longer with us…
The world is changing.
RIP John