Good News...

I just spoke with Mike Traynor's son, Brian, about his dad. Mike appears to be doing well. The hospital staff are optimistic about Mike's recovery, saying that he is getting better. He will be in the hospital for awhile regaining his strength. As Brian said of people that reach a certain "golden age," it is important to keep an eye on all the other body parts as well. In that arena, Mike is doing well. Everything is working like it should. So, while Mike may not be out of the woods yet, it looks like he is hanging in there. And, that's what we want. Get well soon, Mike.

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.

I Made Her a Quiet Promise: Part 1

As I started to post this I received an email that Mike is in the hospital with a serious case of pneumonia. I, and I am sure you folks, wish Mike a speedy recovery.

Ex-soldier, motor sports racer, and newspaper man Mike Traynor, always an avid motorcyclist, founded the Ride for Kids charity events and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. I had the opportunity to talk with Mike about his life and passion.

WM: How did you get interested in motorcycles?

Traynor: There is a picture of me on a Honda Dream 250. I had hair then. I turned it into a race bike. It was my great love, and interested me in riding. I was in the army, in Japan. I worked with engineers in the army and we built a quarter mile flat track and a half mile TT course. We all became motorcyclists and racers. I was the president of the Smoke and Draggers Motorcycle Club. I have no idea where that name came from. It was there when I came to that duty station. We raced with fellow soldiers and had a high number of Japanese college students who had bikes. We had a lot of fun.

WM: You got the Ride for Kids program going in 1984. Would you like to talk to us about that start-up?

Traynor: It was about the occasion for the first Ride for Kids in 1984. We attached the Ride for Kids to an AMA race that was being held at Road Atlanta that weekend. I came up with an idea that I would start up this charitable motorcycle event. We got a great full page about the race and the disease. We promoted Ride for Kids participants could get discounted tickets to the race. We had 100 people come to the event. It wasn’t easy. But we were off and running.

WM: To some, motorcyclists still represent a bad public image. Did you run into image problems outside the motorcycle community?

Traynor: There were two cities that did create problems. But, we were able to work around that by going to a neighboring community. We were challenged when we brought the program to Florida, because of Daytona. Television does sensationalize events. Unfortunately some things happened there that were not in the best interests of the motorcycling community. They were very aware of that. I gave them the names of police agencies, park districts, mayors, all kinds of people. After that they warmly embraced us. They were doing due diligence, that’s what they should have done. We don’t have much problem with that now. Mostly because Ride for Kids has achieved such prominence, and much more leverage.

WM: When did you first become aware of the huge impact the Ride for Kids program had on the cure of pediatric brain tumors?

Traynor: It was gradual. In the early days it was very difficult to give our money to people if we demanded it be used for pediatric brain tumors. The researchers weren’t bad guys and gals, but because they had programs being funded by universities, and philanthropic money, they had their research projects going in the direction of adults. They were going to have to hang a left if they were going to do pediatrics. These were business people. It wouldn’t make good business sense for them to do that. We didn’t understand that in the beginning.

As we became more successful , and that happened more and more quickly over the next few years, we began to amass much greater sums of money that we could put into research. It was quite reasonable for them to say “I’ll take the money and put it into adult brain tumors. And we’ll put it in a specific tumor because some kids get this tumor, too.” So we weren’t wasting our money. There is a trickle down effect from some of the adult brain tumors. We were doing the kids a favor in the only way the research community would allow us. That was perfectly reasonable once we understood what that was all about.

In 1992 we launched the national Ride for Kids program. That was because we had the money from Honda to be able to afford to do that. They were giving us motorcycles to give away. They were also giving us a good sized check to help us cover our operating expenses. Our financial growth became exponential at that point. Probably over the next five years. I would probably say around ’97 we began see a lot more acceptance of researchers wanting to do childhood brain tumor research. We were getting more and more exposure in the general media in more and more cities.