Jim Courtney is one of the founding members of the Atons of Minneapolis. In this interview, recorded for the Atons Oral History Project nearly forty years after the club began, he talks about how the club got started, the early runs, and what has kept it going.
Interviewed by Steve Lenius. Video, sound, and editing by Andrew Bertke.
This transcript has been edited for readability and length. Some stories and names have been left out. The video has the full conversation.
Editor’s note: This interview was recorded on October 23, 2010. When Jim says “now” or “today,” or says he retired from active status “eight or nine years ago,” he is speaking from that time.
Meeting Larry
You came here from Chicago. Why?
I lived in Chicago for about ten years and joined the Second City Motorcycle Club there. That’s where I got my education in leather clubs. Then, in 1971, a few of our officers flew to a run in Detroit, and I met a fellow named Larry Daniel from Minneapolis. I was just bowled over by him.
We flew first class, which back then cost maybe $15 more than coach. Tony Falzone, who later went on to found the Hellfire Club, was with us. When the plane took off, the flight attendant announced, “After we reach cruising altitude, we’ll be serving cock…” and then paused forever before finishing with “…tails.” She was looking right at us, sitting up in first class in full leather. Tony leaned over and said, “Well, I always knew you gave head up here in first class, but I didn’t know you went that far.” I’ll always remember Tony for that line.
At the run, the night before, Larry had looked so imposing that I hadn’t had the nerve to say a word. The next day, their big event was a paddlewheel boat trip to an amusement park. Everyone had gone outside, and the bar was quiet. I saw Larry walk over to it and thought, okay, I’m going to order a drink with him. I said hello, and next thing I knew, we were inseparable.
That night after the banquet, I went back to where he was staying. Larry came on like gangbusters, trying to wrestle and punch around in bed. I had never experienced anything like that in my life, and I shot right out of bed and said, “I can’t do this.” Here was this guy I wanted to impress, and I thought I had ruined everything. He looked at me and said, “Well, just come back to bed.” So I did. Eventually an arm went over me.
The next morning, we took a shower together. I’ve taken very few showers with other guys, but I took one with him. He told me later that if I had gone along with what he was dishing out, it would have been a one-night stand. Because I resisted, we became inseparable.
On Sunday morning, we headed to the farewell brunch. The elevator got stuck on the way down, packed with guys, and the fire department had to chop through the door with axes. I was right by the door. We finally got out and walked to the park, and both of us realized we had just met and now had to part, him to Minneapolis and me to Chicago. We ducked behind some bushes away from everyone and just cried.
When I got home, the phone was already ringing. It was Larry, and we talked for over an hour. We both had company phone lines at work, so we called each other every day. For the next ten weeks, he flew down to Chicago every weekend. I was approaching ten years at IBM, which meant my retirement would be fully vested, so I waited until I hit that mark and then moved to Minneapolis.
Once we lived together, things went downhill. We stayed together almost another year, and even went back to that same Detroit run to celebrate our first anniversary. But the relationship ended. Larry was the first president of the club and served for the first two years. That’s where the two-year limit on the presidency came from. He eventually moved to Houston, contracted AIDS, and passed away in the early 1990s.
Starting a club
When I moved up here, there was no leather club. In fact, I was told: “Oh, you don’t wear your leather in town; you go out of town.” Nobody seemed to want their friends to know they were interested in that sort of thing. It was a real comedown for me. But Larry also wanted a leather club here, and I’d give him more credit than myself for getting that going.
Editor’s note: Jerry Nord, who joined the club later, remembers Jim as one of his mentors during his pledge period. Read his interview.
Nobody knows the exact date, but certainly in the spring of 1972, the Atons were created. More than any other reason, Larry wanted to host a run here in the city.
Where did the name come from?
There had been an earlier club called the Atons, and one of our founding members, Jim Booth, had been a member. They had a reputation on the East Coast, so the name had collateral there. At that time, nearly every leather and motorcycle club used Greek or Roman names. The original founders wanted something distinct, so they chose an Egyptian name.
Editor’s note: More about the name, including an essay by Atons member Jim Chalgren, is on our History of our name page.
Editor’s note: The Atons’ first run, AQUA-I, was held July 21 to 22, 1972. See the History of Atons runs.
What was Aqua 1 like?
Aqua came from the Minneapolis Aquatennial. It was an in-city run. We put everyone up in members’ homes; we didn’t use hotels. The first night, one of our members had a farm just across the border in Wisconsin with a barn, so we all slept in the barn. It was a real turn-on for a lot of the guests. Then we moved everybody back to the Twin Cities for a banquet at a restaurant downtown, and the next day was a farewell brunch.
The entire Second City club came up from Chicago, and we had about 30 people total, which for that time was pretty good. We considered ourselves successful.
The Gopher Run
After Aqua 1, the club went without a run for several years. When we resumed around 1975 or 1976, it wasn’t solely an Atons run. Another club, the Norsemen, had formed. They found a Methodist youth camp in Long Lake, and the caretaker, Harley, and his family were willing to host us. We partnered with them to put on the run, and that’s where the name Gopher Run came from.
What do you remember about Gopher 1?
A canoe. I had never been in one before, and Long Lake is quite long. While I was paddling, another canoe came up behind me singing “When I’m calling you…”, the “Indian Love Call.” I answered back, “I will answer true…” I learned very quickly that you don’t turn around in a canoe. Over it went, and I had to swim for shore wearing full leather motorcycle boots. Everyone ribbed me about it for the rest of the weekend. The guys in the other canoe were from the Silver Star club in Milwaukee.
At Gopher 2, we spoofed the incident in the run show. I rented a Mountie uniform, and a 250-pound guy from the Norsemen played Jeanette MacDonald. It brought down the house, and we had to do an encore. For the finale, I sang “Stouthearted Men.” In all my years with the Atons, that was my personal moment of glory.
Eventually, someone told the Methodist camp leadership who we were, and Harley was ordered to shut us down. The following year, he told us, “If you want to come back one last time, you can have your run.” After that, the Atons ran Gopher on their own, every other year.
Editor’s note: Gopher I was held in 1976 at Kingswood Methodist Camp in Long Lake, and Gopher II in 1977.
The year it flooded
We held the run at Whitewater State Park one year, and it poured relentlessly. That afternoon, a group of us toured caves where water was pouring down the rock faces. That should have been our warning.
Late Saturday night, rangers banged on the cabin doors and told us to evacuate. The river was flash flooding, and the bridge was under water. The ranger led us straight up the muddy bluffs in pitch darkness, with no trail. We hauled ourselves up by tree branches and sheltered on high ground until dawn.
When we hiked back down, the water had reached the door sills of the cabins. The caterer couldn’t get in, so we canceled the closing ceremonies and sent everyone home. We had leftover money from the brunch that never happened, so we made a commemorative pin with a wave on it. Almost everyone who was flooded out came back for the next run.
Editor’s note: The flood Jim describes was Gopher VII, held in 1986 at Whitewater State Park near Altura.
How did you find Flandrau State Park?
The Knights of Leather had scouted it, but passed because they thought it was too open and visible. They told us about it at our January banquet. The very next day, another member and I drove down to New Ulm with over a foot of snow on the ground. The road into the valley was unplowed, so the ranger parked at the top and we trudged down through waist-deep drifts. He pointed across a flat sheet of white and said, “Over there is the swimming pond.” We toured the snowed-in stone cabins, saw the potential, and booked it.
That spring-fed pond became the centerpiece of Gopher Run for years. I’d get the coffee going at dawn and dive in for a swim. The most memorable moment was the opening ceremony of the Egyptian run. It had rained all weekend, but on Saturday evening the skies cleared. We put torches around the whole pond and played Philip Glass across the water. A member paddled a canoe across holding a lit torch toward a huge wooden ankh on the far bank, surrounded by Atons in Egyptian regalia. The run guests stood silently across the pond, completely spellbound.
Editor’s note: The Egyptian run Jim describes was Gopher IX, Valley of the Pharaohs, held in 1990 at Flandrau State Park.
Banquets, toys and being visible
We held two banquets a year in the 1970s, in private dining rooms, and the members decorated the tables beautifully. The Atons had a distinct sense of style early on.
Our other major tradition was Toys for Tots at Christmas. It started with members buying bicycle parts and trying to assemble a bike for a child, which had to be rebuilt by someone who knew what they were doing. Later we asked guests to bring an ornament and an unwrapped toy. When 70 or 80 people were coming, we moved it to The 90s. Food shelf donations were added over time, and people kept bringing toys out of tradition.
The Brass Rail was our first regular home, and they were very hospitable to us. Later, one of our members took a bartending job at The 90s, and our club nights moved there.
Editor’s note: Jerry Nord also remembers this era in his interview: a Gay 90s bartender, Vern Mielke, who introduced him to the Atons, the club’s Toys for Tots drive and holiday food drives, and delivering Thanksgiving dinners to shut-ins.
When I moved to Minneapolis, a lot of gay men looked down on leather. Local guys were hesitant to be seen in it. Forming the Atons changed that. We started going out together in our colors, hanging out at the back bar of The 90s on weekends. Going out visibly as a club gave people the confidence to show their colors.
Editor’s note: “The 90s” is the Gay 90’s, which is still open in Minneapolis. The Brass Rail has since closed.
Neighbors, women and independents
We always had strong ties with clubs in neighboring cities. Chicago was our sister city early on, followed closely by Milwaukee. Later, Des Moines joined the circuit. We joined the Mid-America Conference of Clubs (MACC) and hosted the conference here at least twice.
The Atons has always been an all-male club. But one year we decided to welcome women to our run, and women have been welcome ever since. It caused friction with the Chicago clubs, who thought runs should stay strictly male, and around then Chicago stopped coming in large numbers. My view was simple: I joined an all-male club for male brotherhood, and that carried a responsibility to support women’s leather clubs in turn. We always had strong mutual support with the Knights of Leather. Younger generations see this differently, and newer clubs are co-ed. That’s up to the active membership.
Independents are vital. We couldn’t put on successful events without them. They come to our runs, support our fundraisers and our treasury, and they are the future membership.
Editor’s note: In 2025, the Atons changed the club’s bylaws to remove the requirement that members be gay men. Membership is now open to all, regardless of gender.
Brotherhood, and what AIDS took
Why are the Atons still here?
Brotherhood. It hasn’t always been seamless. We had a major split in the early 1980s, and there were other periods of stress and money trouble. But through every crisis, the core members pulled together and solved the problem. From 1972 on, the Atons were my baby. The club grew out of my relationship with Larry. Our relationship didn’t survive, but the club did.
George Moore was an early Black member of the club, a nurse at the Red Door Clinic, and served as Atons president for a year. He may well have been the first Black president of a leather club in the Midwest. In 1985, as AIDS emerged, George organized the first safe-sex seminar for the Twin Cities leather community, at The 90s.
Minnesota was somewhat insulated at first, compared to Chicago and San Francisco, but we lost friends. Greg Gust, a funeral director in Dodge Center, planned his own funeral carefully. The Atons served as an honor guard in full dress leather colors. Greg left the club a bequest, which became the Greg Gust Fund, to help members travel to runs in other cities.
Editor’s note: The Greg Gust Fund no longer exists.
Editor’s note: Jerry Nord, in his interview, remembers Greg as a quiet benefactor who paid for uniforms and for members’ runs. He also describes losing friends during the AIDS years, and taking two men into his home after their families turned away.
We had produced big theme runs, Egyptian, Roman and Renaissance. The mural for the Egyptian run was painted in my basement by three members, all of whom died of AIDS. After that era of loss, the club never again had the heart or the people to stage productions on that scale. That is what AIDS did to our community.
Advice for young leatherfolk
When I entered this community, I felt like an outsider looking in. Young people today often feel the same isolation, but they have organizations and spaces that didn’t exist when we started. Leather club life isn’t for everyone. But if it resonates with you, step inside. There is nothing like finding your chosen brothers and actively shaping the culture and future of your community.
More Atons history: Oral history: Jerry Nord, History of Atons runs, History of our name, About us.