YCHDOA 30th Annual Toy Run

About this event

York County Harley-Davidson Owners Association caps its full membership at a hundred and keeps a waiting list, which is an unusual problem for a motorcycle club to have. It began in early 1980, when about twenty riders from the south of the county — men on Panheads and Shovelheads, with their wives and girlfriends — decided the loose riding crowd they belonged to ought to become something more durable now that they were getting older and having children. The club has run its toy run since 1997 and gives it a proper name: the David Milliken-Derr Jr. Toy Run. More than half a million dollars has gone from it to Penn State Health Children's Hospital in Hershey, along with toys, care items and cash handed over in person. Riders muster in a supermarket car park on the east side of York, load up, and carry the toys to the hospital themselves rather than dropping them at a collection point. In one recent year more than seven hundred bikes made the trip, with Santa somewhere in the middle of them. Any road bike will do; it is a short escorted run, and families come.