Tom Hand

The Keeper of the Beginning

TOM HAND AT A GLANCE

STARTED RACING: 1974, at age 18

FIRST TRACK: Fast Eddie’s, Grandview, Missouri

EARLY SANCTION: None

FIRST SPONSOR: Gary’s Bike Mart

FACTORY SPONSORS: None

FAVORITE JERSEY: Blue Gary’s Bike Mart-Webco jersey

FAVORITE RIDERS: Mark Poole, Nick Sistrunk, and Kyle Mallot

FAVORITE MEMORY: Building the dedicated downhill track at Kernodle’s Park

OPENING

The smell of cut grass and bonfires can still take Tom Hand back to the side of a hill at Kernodle’s Park.

There, alongside Gary Davis, Mark Poole, Nick Sistrunk, Kyle Mallot, and Nick’s parents, Tom Hand helped carve out one of Kansas City’s earliest dedicated BMX tracks. Its first turn was a sharp right-hander that brought the riders back almost parallel with the front straight. It was difficult to negotiate at speed. Get through it successfully, however, and the rest of the track was fast and fun.

Building Kernodle’s Park was monumental. But Tom Hand’s contribution to Kansas City BMX extends well beyond that hillside. He was among the area’s earliest racers, helped promote some of its first organized events, worked in the bicycle shops that supported the emerging sport—and preserved much of the printed history that allows its beginnings to be reconstructed fifty years later.

BEFORE BMX HAD A NAME IN KANSAS CITY

Hand started BMX racing in 1974 at age eighteen. By early September—shortly before he began school at Longview—he had attended his first organized race at Fast Eddie’s in Grandview, Missouri. This was before the area had an established sanctioning organization or formal BMX system.

Long before that first organized race, bicycles were already central to his life.

Upon moving to Raytown in 1970, he met Mark Poole, who lived one block away. Tom and his brothers became close friends with Mark and his brothers, and the group rode constantly in every kind of weather.

Next door to Tom lived James Wrobleski, who began motorcycle racing around 1972. Wrobleski raced motorcycles that included a 125 Penton, a 125 Honda Elsinore, and a 450 Maico. Tom and the others traveled to races with him and served as an informal pit crew. Through those trips, they were exposed to the racing culture, machinery, preparation, and dirt-track environment that would help shape their own approach to bicycles.

At the time, Hand rode his 26-inch, balloon-tire 1951 Schwinn. The bicycle weighed approximately fifty pounds and had belonged to him since he was eleven years old. Despite its size and weight, he became remarkably capable on it. He could ride a wheelie for more than an eighth of a mile—a feat he remembers demonstrating at Kansas City International Raceway.

That same heavy Schwinn became the bicycle he raced at Fast Eddie’s in 1974.

IF HE COULD DO IT, WE COULD DO IT

Hand and his friends developed a small BMX-style course around the front lot of a church near Raytown South High School. They also rode at Farley Fields and on other trails and dirt tracks.

It was at Farley Fields, probably in late 1974 or early 1975, that they met Nick Sistrunk. Nick was helping with their races by early 1975.

The organized race at Fast Eddie’s changed Hand’s thinking. He did not simply see a place where he could race. He saw something that could be reproduced.

“I figured if he could do it, I could do it at Gary’s.”

That simple realization helped move Hand from participant to promoter. BMX did not arrive in Kansas City through a finished institutional system. Riders, parents, shops, and motorcycle enthusiasts saw what others were doing, adapted it, and began building their own version.

GARY’S BIKE MART

Hand’s first sponsor was Gary’s Bike Mart.

He also worked for Gary Davis, fixing, assembling, and selling bicycles out of his Raytown shop. Gary’s next shop, at 10505 Blue Ridge Boulevard, became an important gathering point for the earliest local riders. Racing was held at the location, which became the team’s home track in 1975. The shop supplied the equipment, mechanical knowledge, and support needed to turn informal riding into organized BMX activity.

Hand’s first true race bicycle was built from a 1975 mild-steel Webco frame. It used a Schwinn fork, an Ashtabula crank, Weinmann front and rear rims, heavy .120-inch spokes, a Shimano disc brake and freewheel, and CYC handlebars.

His favorite jersey was the blue Gary’s Bike Mart-Webco jersey.

There were no nearby Midwest Nationals during this earliest period and no factory sponsorship waiting for Kansas City riders. The sport was still being assembled locally by people using the bicycles, parts, land, and knowledge available to them.

Hand’s favorite riders were not distant factory stars. They were his three local friends: Mark Poole, Nick Sistrunk, and Kyle Mallot.

BUILDING KERNODLE’S PARK

Among Hand’s most enduring memories is the construction of the track at Kernodle’s Park.

Fast Eddie’s was basically a downhill finish, but it followed an existing motorcycle trail. Kernodle’s was different. It was created specifically as a BMX track.

Gary Davis, Tom Hand, Mark Poole, Nick Sistrunk, Kyle Mallot, and Nick’s parents worked on the hillside together. The labor, grass, dirt, smoke, and bonfires became permanently tied to the memory.

The track began with a sharp right-hand turn that brought the riders back almost parallel with the front straight. It was difficult to negotiate at speed, but once a rider made it through successfully, the remainder of the track was fast and fun.

The demanding turn may have been imperfect, but that was part of early BMX. Track design was still being discovered through experience. Builders created something, riders tested it, and everyone learned what worked.

Kernodle’s Park represented more than another place to race. It showed that Kansas City riders and shop owners could build a dedicated BMX facility of their own.

BEYOND THE TRACK

Hand continued riding and racing until approximately age twenty, when his attention began shifting toward cars.

After Gary’s Bike Mart, he worked in the bicycle department at the JCPenney store at Blue Ridge Mall. In December 1976, he began what he describes as his first “real” job at Bendix.

The new job also contributed to the end of his race-promotion period. When Hand and the others stopped promoting races, he believes he turned the rider-attendance lists over to Rick Smedley. Hand rarely discarded important documents, and Gary Davis had moved into the auto-parts business and would have had little reason to retain the lists.

Those records are among the few pieces of the early history Hand wishes had survived.

They could have identified many of the young people who participated in Kansas City’s earliest races—before established points books, sanction records, and regular newspaper coverage made the sport easier to trace.

THE HISTORY HE KEPT

Fortunately, Hand preserved a remarkable amount of everything else.

His surviving historical materials include trophies, photographs, jerseys, bicycles, catalogs, issues of BMX News, and original bicycle parts.

He wishes the group had taken more photographs, but early racers faced a simple problem: they were all participating. They could race or take pictures; they could not easily do both.

During the five decades that followed, Hand continued safeguarding the material. He has shared it with anyone interested in seeing it, asking only that they cover the cost of reproduction. His work with Elaine Holt of BMX News has also helped preserve and publish material of historical importance to BMX’s earliest riders.

What once appeared to be old paper, used equipment, and boxes of bicycle material has become evidence of how BMX developed.

STILL RIDING STEEL

Hand’s favorite bicycle is his current one: a steel DG Racer 3 equipped with Weinmann rims, .120-inch spokes, a Shimano disc brake and freewheel, CYC handlebars, a Takagi front sprocket, and 7.5-inch cranks.

Like his first true racing bicycle, it is not especially light.

That similarity feels appropriate. Fifty years after racing a fifty-pound Schwinn at Fast Eddie’s, Tom Hand still appreciates the kind of strong, purposeful bicycle that helped define the sport’s earliest years.

THE KEEPER OF THE BEGINNING

Tom Hand helped race, promote, build, repair, sell, and preserve Kansas City BMX.

His importance does not rest on a factory contract or national title. It rests on being present when the local sport was taking form—and understanding, even when few others did, that its physical evidence was worth keeping.

For fifty years, he preserved the photographs, publications, bicycles, jerseys, catalogs, and memories of Kansas City BMX’s beginnings.

Now those pieces can be connected and shared.

Somebody saved the evidence. Tom Hand was one of the people who did.

KANSAS CITY BMX HISTORY •