Pancake feed fuels bicycle helmet project

The Red Oak Kiwanis Club is celebrating 15 years of donating helmets to area third graders, thanks primarily to the efforts of longtime Kiwanis member and bike enthusiast Wayne Donohue.

Donohue, 80, is the only remaining charter member of the Kiwanis club who is still active in the organization, which began in 1975, and he has been heavily involved in the helmet program since it began in 1998.

“I’ve always known the benefit of having a helmet,” he said, explaining he’s had two concussions from falls while cycling. “When I started bicycling in 1977, I got a bicycle at a big shop in Omaha, and they did not have helmets then. I bought a hockey helmet instead.”

Each year, the Kiwanis club raises around $1,000 to purchase the helmets. The money this year was raised at a pancake feed held Tuesday at Inman Primary. Through the program, every child is sized and fitted with the helmets, and then Donohoe provides a safety lesson.

He said he buys a round watermelon, fits it in a helmet then drops it, proving the helmet keeps the melon from breaking. Then, he drops the melon again without the helmet, and it splats into pieces on the ground.

“They’ll remember that long after they forget everything I said during my talk,” he said. “Accidents can happen to anyone.

You don’t have to be going down a mountain and you don’t have to be going fast.”

Donohue had always been a fan of bicycling. He said he made a four-mile path around his farm for his family to ride in the evenings and even remembers riding his cousin’s girls bike to high school every day because he didn’t have his own. 

His interest peaked, though, in 1976 when the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa came through Red Oak for the first time.

“I enjoyed bicycling and I enjoyed camping,” he said. “So RAGBRAI came to town, and my, what a combination. I was hooked.”

The next spring, Donohue bought his very first brand new bike and participated in RAGBRAI.

Since then, he has competed in races across the country, including other weeklong races and 24- and 12-hour events. Donohue is also a world record holder for the 24-hour Ultra-Marathon Cycling Association championship race in the 60-69-age category during 1996 and 1997.

At the age of 80 and after two concussions following bike accidents in races in the last few years, Donohue is slowing down.

“I have agreed to only bicycle with someone; I’m not supposed to ride alone anymore, and I’ve kind of agreed not to race anymore.  We’re going to talk about that one, though.”

Donohue said it’s hard to stop what he’s been doing for so long.

Bicycles are more than just a hobby for Donohue, they also led to a career.

After graduating from Red Oak High School in 1950, he spent more than two years working at the Farmers’ Mercantile before joining the army. After two more years, he moved back home and rented a farm near his parent’s in Stanton.

Twenty years of farming proved strenuous, and Donohue switched careers again, becoming an agriculture representative for First Star Bank in Red Oak, now U.S. Bank.

“I’m ahead of my time because they say that people now are going to have several careers,” he said.

At the bank, Donohue worked his way to senior vice president before another career opportunity presented itself.

In 1992, at the age of 69, he took early retirement from the bank to focus on his latest venture, a bike shop, which he operated out of his garage in Stanton.

“Every morning I carried those bikes out and lined them up and carried them back in every evening. I told people that’s how I got my exercise.”

He started small, just fixing a few bikes for friends, and per his wife’s suggestion, decided to build the hobby into a business, contacting dealers and eventually building a client base he said spanned from I-35 to I-80.

“It can’t be that I did much better work than the city shops,” he said. “I think they just liked the idea of someone who would spend more time with them, and I enjoyed talking about bicycles too, so I was kind of a resource person as well.”

After selling his bike shop in 2002 and selling his farm a few years ago, he found a new way to stay connected to the cycling world.

At the age of 79, the twice-retired bank representative and bike shop owner bought a business, selling safety mirrors that mount to eyeglasses for cyclists.

For more information on the safety mirror and Donohue’s races, visit his website at http://home.mchsi.com/~Donohues/.