I Made Her a Quiet Promise: Part 2

WM: You are still involved with Ride for Kids. You have been the state director for the Honda Sports Tourning Association (now the Motorcycle Sports Touring Association) in Georgia and founder of the Helen, Georgia regional rally. What else is keep you busy these days?

Traynor: The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation is keeping us busy. We have been fortunate enough to get really involved with the medical community. Diane is probably the most respected non-medical person in America today when it comes to brain tumor research both for adults and pediatric. We are very active in the motorcycle community. We have close relations with all of the magazine editors, and a whole lot of the regional runs as well. We participate in the Life for Kids programs. Our plates are very full.

WM: Is there anything you haven’t accomplished in your life, or maybe something you would have done differently?

Traynor: There is no school to teach you to lead the Ride for Kids program. It is the school of life. Every little thing we have done in our lives has prepared us to all come together as a member of the http://www.pbtfus.org/rideforkids/ team. I think it’s exciting. I wish I could have gone to school. I think we would have been a little farther along now, had I understood better how a non-profit works. There are a few that said we were nuts because we don’t stop. If you had ever been a pall bearer for a little girl who was a brain tumor patient, or if you had ever delivered a eulogy at a funeral for boy that died with a brain tumor, or if you had embraced a parent whose child was grievously ill in a hospital, you would be crazy too.

WM: Who has had a positive influence on your life?

Traynor: Her name is Meredith Bottin. I met her in maybe 1987. A beautiful 10 year old girl, God she was just the prettiest little thing. She had pretty red hair and she acted like this gracious grown up woman. She was so elegant. It just didn’t really make sense, unless you have been around these kids with brain tumors. We had a Ride for Kids event coming up. So I met her mom, who was a really outgoing delightful lady. I met her dad and her brother Joe. Diane and I became really good friends with the family. Meredith became kind of like the icon for the event. Meredith began to have recurrences of her brain tumor. She had three different surgeries at three different hospitals. She went through a bone marrow

transplant. She spent her 11^th birthday in an isolation tent. She had surgery in Oregon. A lady wrote a book and said that people could heal their bodies with their mind. Meredith’s mother took her down to have her meet with the doctor to get Meredith to think herself well. They did everything that a parent could do. I’m sure they put themselves in grievous financial condition doing all of those things. They desperately were fighting to save their little girl. In the mean time Diane and I were watching this little girl dissipate before us.

Diane and I got a phone call early in the morning. Julia saying that Meredith passed in the night. She had gone to be with the angels. We were very sad, but at the same time she was suffering so badly. We said that we were grateful that she had gone on to be with God. I was a pall bearer for her, and while I was carrying her casket I made her a quiet promise, that I would leave my job and work full time to cure the disease. It was the most emotional thing that I have ever gone through in my entire life.

Traynor comments: I think it is an incredible testimony to the motorcyclist community that ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of those who participated in the Ride for Kids program over the last twenty-five years do not have a child with a brain tumor. Doctors would say why are they doing this? We are good people. When motorcyclists contributed doctors could not understand. We tapped into our fellow motorcyclists. It made sense to us that if our community was willing to help, that we would find more. The Ride for Kids program has raised in excess of forty-five million dollars in the last twenty-five years. In most cases, that money did not come from the pockets of the motorcyclist. It came from the sweat equity of the motorcyclists that knocked on doors; that talked to people at work and at church. The positive public relations that emerged are incalculable.