Up Front
UP FRONT
Ride for Kids
David Edwards
MIKE AND DIANNE TRAYNOR HAVE A dream, and motorcycle riders can help make it come true.
Last year, economic recession notwithstanding, Mike walked away from a high-paying job as a newspaper advertising executive and Dianne suspended her successful accounting career. Their beloved ST 1100 sport-tourer was put up in the garage, and the couple hit the road on a mission to eliminate pediatric brain tumors.
Brain tumors kill more American children 15 years old and younger than any other disease. That distinction used to belong to leukemia, but millions of dollars in research have dramatically upped that dread disease’s survival rate to 75 percent. Brain-tumor research hasn’t been as intensive, and as a result, of the 20,400 children diagnosed with brain tumors last year, 50 to 75 percent are expected to die.
Mike was made painfully aware of the problem when a troubled co-worker and fellow motorcyclist walked into his office one day in 1980, closed the door and told of his 5-month-old daughter who was afflicted with a tumor. Over the next three years, the sad scenario repeated itself as Mike learned just how widespread the disease was. In 1984, wanting to help, if only in a small way, he, Dianne and some friends put on a brain-tumor charity ride in the Atlanta area. One hundred motorcyclists attended, raising $4000. The ride was intended as a one-shot deal, but two month’s later, the event’s poster boy passed away.
“It had a heck of an impact,” says Mike. “It was more than I could put up with.”
Over the next eight years, more and more people became involved, and the Atlanta Ride for Kids, as the event became known, raised more than a million dollars. The money has been used to open a pediatric cancer research laboratory at a Georgia university, to hire research personnel to staff the lab, and to purchase the equipment needed to run it. In 1989, Mike and Dianne-herself a cancer survivorpooled their vacation time and helped organize a Chicago Ride for Kids, which in three years has raised $75,000 for the Illinois-based American Brain Tumor Association.
But it wasn’t enough.
“The carnage was increasing, instead of getting better,” says Mike. That’s when the couple hatched the idea of going nationwide with the rides. First, they would need someone to underwrite expenses and provide logistical support. American Honda had donated motorcycles as door prizes at previous Rides for Kids, so that’s where Mike went first, flying to the company’s imposing, monolithic headquarters in Torrance, California. Inside, he laid out the program and told of the disease’s toll on the youth of the nation and their families. It did not take long to convince Honda’s industrial captains-some with decidedly watery eyes—to come on board.
“I didn’t have to do much of a sales job,” says Mike.
The program kicked-off in Southern California last February. Nearly 200 riders braved the tail end of the worst rainstorms to lash the state in the past decade. It was an interesting crosssection of motorcyclists. Several Gold Wing Road Riders chapters attended, as did Harley Owners Group members, as did the Southern California Sportbike Club, as did ABATE members, as did vintage-bike owners, all riding together for the 60-mile run down the San Diego Freeway.
Riders were asked to collect at least $35 each, but most did much better than that. Altogether, $26,601 was raised. “That’s five times more money than we’ve raised in our previous first-year events. We’ve never had this kind of response,” says Mike. And because Honda paid all administrative costs, because area businesses supplied breakfast and lunch, because local printers donated pamphlets and flyers, and because officers from several police departments showed up on their own time, all of that money went directly to research work. Seventyfive percent of the funds went to the USC Children’s Hospital brain-tumor program, 25 percent was earmarked for the establishment of a brain-tumor registry, a nationwide data bank that will collect and disseminate vital patient and disease information.
Of course, the real winners here are the kids. But motorcycling is a winner, too. Not only are the rides a chance for owners of a variety of machines to get together for a few hours of fun, but the public relations value is immense. As Harley-Davidson has shown with its support of musculardystrophy research (Harley’s MDA rides have raised more than $10 million to date), local and national media can’t seem to resist the allure of a congregation of motorcyclists getting together to help ailing children. After years of B-grade biker movies and the recent assault on performance bikes by insurance groups, governmental agencies and misinformed mainstream journalists, we need all the good PR we can generate. And let’s not forget that research funds generated by both the Harley and Honda programs are handed over to neurosurgeons, a group of physicians that, for the most part, previously regarded motorcyclists only as accident victims who needed to be cleaned up after.
Someone recently asked Mike Traynor what he gets out of running the charity rides. “Nothing,” he said, “except that I’m sleeping very well.”
There are 10 Ride for Kids events scheduled around the country in 1992, with plans to expand in ’93. To find out more about the program, give Mike and Dianne a call at 404/3947870. If there’s no ride in your area, you can still send a donation to the Ride for Kids Foundation, Mail Stop 100-4C-3B, 1919 Torrance Blvd., Torrance, CA 90501-2746.
Oh, and sweet dreams. O
