Soni Wolf

Soni S.H.S. Wolf (September 19, 1948 – April 25, 2018) was an American lesbian activist. She described herself as a dyke, and was also a motorcycle enthusiast and former U.S. Air Force Vietnam-era veteran. She co-founded the Dykes on Bikes (DOB) after their 1976 San Francisco Pride parade debut, and rode with them each year from 1978 until her death in 2018. DOB does “philanthropic work for LGBTQ causes and organizations around the world”.

She joined the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War. It was also divisive with protests against it, and a growing opposition to United States involvement, with the public often projecting their hostility onto the vets. One of the riders noted them as being “dykes on bikes” which was overheard, and reported in the city's main newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. is for embracing the name, and helping the new group helping leverage it to become one of the most visible, and empowering symbols of LGBTQ communities. said, “Soni was the founding mother of Dykes on Bikes,” and added “She was the inspiration and the mentor that allowed Dykes on Bikes to flourish all over the world.” In the mid-1980s the DOB participants had to get more organized, She also served on the board of San Francisco Pride. DOB grew larger than San Francisco, with sixteen chapters and thousands of members in the U.S., Britain and Australia. The attorney with the PTO decided dyke would be offensive to a significant portion of the lesbian community. In July 2007 the Supreme “declined to hear the case, rendering a decision in favor of protecting the name Dykes on Bikes in the court of appeals binding”.

In 2008, Wolf became central again in a second round of legal battles when DOB went to the same agency, the PTO to register the groups’ logo, which unsurprisingly includes the name of the group, Dykes on Bikes.

Wolf served as the DOB historian and secretary for many years, and in 2016 she was made Secretary Emeritus.

She died at age 69 from complications of pulmonary disease and pneumonia at Seton Medical Center in Daly City, California.

The Soni Wolf Memorial Fund was set up through the DOB to cover the expenses of cataloging and archiving Wolf's extensive collection covering the groups’ existence.

In June 2018, Wolf was to serve as grand marshal of San Francisco Pride events, she died two months before the event. Other riders put signs on their motorcycles or held up signs in their hands in her honor.

In June 2019, Wolf was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, while The Wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.