Joe Parkhurst 1926-2000
Joe Parkhurst
1926-2000
"I was just a guy who worked on magazines, loved motorcycles and could never find anything worthwhile to read about them."
ONE OF THE HARD THINGS ABOUT MIDDLE AGE—AND BEYOND—IS watching the people who created the world in which you grew up pass away. For me, Joe Parkhurst was one of those guys. He was editor and art director at the first high-quality karting magazine, Karting World, just as I was stepping into that mania as a 12-year-old, and—as if reading my mind—he invented the first modern motorcycle magazine, Cycle World, at the exact moment I was gripped by an early teenage passion for bikes.
Before Joe, bike magazines seemed to be written uncritically, to please motorcycle manufacturers, but Joe created the first magazine written for those of us who wanted to buy motorcycles, rather than sell them.
Huge difference. He also set a standard for intelligent, adult writing that made us younger readers feel wired into a bigger and better world.
He took motorcycling seriously-but always in a fun and colorful way. And that’s exactly the kind of person he was,
when I finally met him in 1980. Highly knowledgeable, but funny, relaxed and friendly, always with a sparkle of good humor in his eye.
He was a cheerful taker of risks, and without his influence hardly any of us would be doing exactly what we are doing at this moment. That’s a lot of levers in the universe for one man to pull, and always for the better. We’ll miss you, Joe. And thanks for everything. -Peter Egan, Editor-at-Large
I first met Joe Parkhurst in the pages of Cycle World, February, 1962. It was the second issue of the magazine, and it was the year Cycle World changed everything.
Suddenly motorcycling had a real magazine. I thought about CW exactly the way John Lennon felt about Elvis: Before Elvis, there was nothing. Cycle World was intelligent, literate, entertaining, independent and critically aware. Joe spoke to me.
As an absolute article of faith, Parkhurst believed motorcycling had a new, young, sophisticated audience poised to grow and ready to embrace innovative technology from Japan. He pitched his magazine high to the best and brightest, and he trusted the future would reward genuine quality.
The success of Parkhurst’s venture made motorcycle publications a legitimate, professional pursuit for serious writers and journalists. As one beneficiary of Parky’s faith and expertise, I feel a special connection to my Cycle World issues from 1962. They remain important touchstones of my motorcycling experience.
That first wondrous year of Cycle World brought Joe Parkhurst, Publisher and Editor, together with Gordon Jennings, Technical Editor. Parkhurst knew there was
no one like Jennings in motorcycling, or maybe anywhere else. Exceedingly bright, Jennings was a penetrating thinker and an enthusiastic doer whose crisp and elegant prose gave Cycle World its clear voice of technical authority and credibility.
Jennings held forth from a stage Parkhurst had risked everything to create. Joe later recalled, “Betty Jean Parkhurst and I hocked our souls to start Cycle World.” Failure and financial ruin were indisputable possibilities. “Editorial integrity and quality, though essential to the success of a magazine, were not readily accepted by an industry that had never ever heard a disparaging word about its products,” he said. Joe bucked the old-line establishment head-on, and he would prevail.
Meanwhile, enthusiasts flocked to the magazine. Within a few short months, Cycle World emerged as America’s largest and most powerful motorcycle journal. Virtue rewarded: Parkhurst’s CW had the championship clout of size, quality and credibility.
Nineteen-sixty-two, Parky once reckoned, was his finest year. Thinking now about Joe and Gordon-gone within a month of each other-and 1962 reminds me again that life is not about endings, but beginnings and becomings. -Phil Schilling Cycle magazine, 1971-89
Joe Parkhurst founded Cycle World on the then-radical notion that a motorcycle magazine should do road-test reports that provided consumers honest, objective acceleration numbers and equally honest, if necessarily subjective, comments about handling, braking and rider comfort. Cycle Publisher Floyd Clymer denounced Parkhurst’s plans, saying that taking an advertiser’s money and then criticizing his product was the same as stealing.. .Parkhurst talked the printers into extending a line of credit, sold his sailboat and Porsche, drove around in an old Ford station wagon with matching holes in its floor and exhaust system, and on a couple of occasions borrowed eating money from me. It was hollow-belly time for him, and things stayed that way for many lean months. I think most men would have tossed in their cards. He didn’t, and CW became America’s first modem-era motorcycle magazine, burying its feeble competition.. .Give thanks to Joe Parkhurst, who started it all. Others might have done it, but Joe did. -Gordon Jennings, excerpted from one of his last columns for Motorcyclist magazine
When I first joined the Road & Track family in May of 1972, there were four "big shots" who ran Bond/Parkhurst Publishing: John and Elaine Bond, who started R&T, and Joe and Betty Jean Parkhurst, Cycle World’s founders. Joe, as Publisher of CW, seemed easily the most approachable and fun-loving of the group. He always displayed an easy smile, a delightful laugh and a great pleasure in the enjoyment of life.
Joe had the brilliance to create Cycle World as a magazine of unrivaled integrity blended with the celebration of motorcycling. His contribution to the enthusiast-magazine field was enormous. More importantly, he was a great guy, and all of us who knew him will forever be grateful that we were included in his circle.
-Thos L. Bryant, Editor-in-Chief, Road & Track
When I met Joe, he had a 1950 Triumph Trophy. We'd spend Sundays riding canyons all over the San Fernando Valley. Once he called me up to cancel a date-a car had turned left in front of him and he’d flown over the hood. He got off with only scrapes and bruisers, no broken bones. Joe was lucky like that.
In the Army, Joe was stationed in Hawaii. We lived off-base, and I remember our landlord being very impressed with Joe, saying he was such a busy young man. Besides his military duties, Joe taught SCUBA classes at the YMCA when he wasn’t diving, boating or fishing, and went to art school at night.
Joe was Mr. Positive, always looking on the upside of any project. I remember him convincing me we should buy Cycle World. I had doubts, but he was like a kid at Christmas, busting at the seams. A dream of his was just about to come tme. Joe embraced life and lived it to the fullest. He was always creating, always coming up with new ideas, right up to the time he got sick last summer.
During the early days of Cycle World, we all worked hard, but no one harder than Joe. He tested the bikes, shot the photos, wrote the stories, then did paste-up at night on a drawing board at home. But we always had fun, no matter how much red the company was in. -Betty Jean Wilson, Parkhurst ’s first wife
and co-founder of Cycle World
Joe died just before Christmas, but that wasn't the only reason I was immediately reminded of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In that wonderful story, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge back to the scenes of his apprenticeship and the old miser weeps happy tears as he relives hearing his old boss tell the staff to roll up the rugs, clear the floor and tap the keg.
Remember that?
I sure do.
Nearly 40 years ago, Joe Parkhurst gambled all and won. He mortgaged everything he had or could borrow, and it paid off. Cycle World became the best and the most popular motorcycle magazine in the country. Then, in 1973, CW was purchased by media giant CBS for big bucks. Joe was in clover. The dream had come true.
So, what did he do with his good fortune?
Back then I worked at Road & Track, which shared a building with Cycle World, and I’d begun contributing motorcycle stuff. Even so, I was surprised to be invited to the CW Christmas party, but of course I went.
The party was at Joe’s place, a stylish house in a neighborhood to match, except probably the other houses on the block didn’t have classic motorcycles suspended from the rafters.
We were noshing and gossiping when there was a stir. The crowd parted.
Out came Joe and the chef, or the caterer or whoever.
They were rolling out a giant cart, topped by a huge silver platter. Atop the platter was a roasted pig.
In its mouth was an apple.
Yes, just like all those cartoons, at all the banquets to which royalty went and the rest of us didn’t.
But here we all were, this once.
We ink-stained bike nuts were there because Joe had done well and he seized on that circumstance to do good, to share his success.
I thought at the time, and still think today, it was the best party I ever enjoyed, and that only Joe Parkhurst would have treated his employees like that. -Allan Girdler, Contributing Editor
I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Joe Parkhurst. We had known each other for almost 40 years, our friendship having .started when Joe launched Cycle World magazine back in 1962. I had provided photographs for a few American publications at the time, which had sadly failed without payment, so when Joe's letter arrived asking me to con tribute, I thought, "Here we go again." I wish I still had that original letter, as I have never read anything like it. His enthusiasm was so infectious. It was not only his vast knowledge about bikes that impressed me; he was informed on almost every subject. I recall taking Joe with Dan Gumey to a British motocross meeting and on the trip we passed the historic site of Stonehenge. It was Joe who was able to tell Dan the history of the place far better than I could have done.
Joe’s enthusiasm for life, that ready smile and sudden “Oh my God” in appreciation of a competitor’s riding skill-or a good malt whisky-is something I will always remember.
The continuing success of Cycle World is a memorial to his keenness for which all enthusiasts should be thankful.
Thanks Joe for all those good times we had together, I shall never forget them. My deepest sympathy goes to his wife Claire and his family and friends as I sip a 20-year-old Glenlivet in memory of the greatest enthusiast I have ever met. -B.R. Nicholls, friend and photographer □
