Meet the Couple Who Brought the Golden Flyer II to New York

It started with a 3 a.m. epiphany.

Jeryl Schriever, the author of Driving the Vote for Women and one of the spark plugs behind the Golden Flyer II’s 25-state journey for the Equal Rights Amendment, was lying awake in the dark, running through the logistics of getting a Saxon roadster from Florida to New York in time for the campaign launch. She needed someone who could drive the car with her and someone who knew old engines. Folks who loved old vehicles. A crew with nerves for a 1,200-mile haul in a century-old open-air automobile.

And then it hit her: Peter Brown and Susan Nourse.

Peter Brown spent years as the master mechanic at the Seal Cove Auto Museum in Maine — a man who knows the temperament of vintage engines the way a conductor knows an orchestra. He recently retired from the Museum, handing off his tools after decades of keeping irreplaceable automobiles alive and running. But retirement hasn’t slowed him down. He and his wife Susan Nourse are veterans of the Great Race, the legendary long-distance rally that sends antique cars and their intrepid crews thundering across thousands of miles of American road, come rain, mud, or mechanical calamity.

Susan Nourse brings her own remarkable credentials. She spent years as a police officer in Maine and finished her career as Chief of Police in Freeport — the town where L.L. Bean built its empire — before retiring to pursue what she loves most: driving old cars. As Jeryl put it, that’s actually how Peter and Susan met. They were at a car show, both admiring the same vintage automobile.

When Jeryl called with the proposition, there were — by her account — about 15 minutes of hesitation before Peter and Susan said yes. In a car like this, that practically counts as jumping at the chance.

The roles divided naturally. Susan, unafraid of cranking a stubborn engine and already sewing period-appropriate yellow-striped skirts and gluing flowers onto hats for the journey, would take the wheel — playing the role of Alice Burke, the driver of the original 1916 Golden Flyer. Jeryl, the author and organizer, would ride alongside as the Nell Richardson of the pair. “I feel like we’re a sort of Lucy and Ethel,” Jeryl laughed.

Before the car even left the warehouse, Susan was already leaning under the hood with Peter. Her verdict on the Saxon’s starting procedure: skip the extra fuel in the priming cups, adjust the choke, and crank it a specific way. The car agreed. It started.

Peter and Susan set off from Florida with the Golden Flyer II loaded on a trailer, destination: New York City for the campaign’s launch-- a 110-year-old car, a stuffed cat on a leash, and about a thousand miles of American highway between them and the start of something historic.

There is something fitting about this particular crew carrying this particular car to this particular city. In 1916, Alice Burke and Nell Richardson drove the original Golden Flyer into the heart of a nation that hadn’t yet decided whether women deserved the vote. 

Now, more than a century later, Jeryl and Susan are making a similar drive — to a nation that has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment through 38 states but still hasn’t seen a Congress courageous enough to affirm it as the 28th Amendment.

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Follow the Golden Flyer II across all 25 states. Sign the petition and help us finish the journey toward equality.