After spending a few years in the teaching profession, Ken Lee joined the staff at Cycle magazine where he would assume the responsibilities of Road Test Editor and Senior Editor over time. Upon his departure from Cycle, Lee spent a few seasons in the advertising world working on motorcycle and automobile accounts before returning to work in education as a private school Principal and Superintendent. In 2000 he jumped back into the motorcycling fold, joining Vreeke & Associates where he currently serves as Associate Creative Director on the Dunlop, Honda and Helmet House accounts.

My tenure at Cycle magazine did not last until the bitter end, but I was there to witness what I believe was the beginning of the end-and that was bad enough. I agree with Danny Coe when he spotlights the sale of Cycle from Ziff-Davis Publishing to CBS Publishing as the watershed event. After that, the magazine was sold a couple times more in rapid-fire succession (at least as rapid is judged within publishing circles, if not literal calendar days), which reinforced the bottom line: Cycle was now indeed nothing more than a mere widget, a commercial commodity to be bought and sold-or killed-at whim. The barbarians were at the gates.

Of course, at that time the editorial staff did not realize such a transformation had occurred; in fact, we all fought tooth and nail-at least for a while-to preserve the core identity of the magazine. But in a few years, any such efforts would all prove to be in vain.

It's interesting that in paying homage to the book, Dean highlighted the 1982 Total Paid Circulation figure of 460,386, because that year sits smack dab in the middle of my on-staff stint at Cycle. I began working for Cook Neilson as a freelancer in 1978, and when he left the magazine in 1979 I filled out the masthead from the bottom up, so to speak. I departed the magazine in 1986.

While I do not disagree with what my good friend Danny Coe penned here recently about his take on things at Cycle, I was moved to respond and present to long-time fans a view from a different bird's eye. Coe greatly emphasized the racer tie-in, for he and those others he named comprised the road racing crowd at Cycle. However, there was another important core of people that made up the very life-blood of the magazine: The editorial staff.

When I came aboard in 1979, I joined a marvelously talented group of editors that Cook had already assembled: Dave Hawkins, Don Phillipson, John Stein and Bill Stermer. At that time, Mark Homchick was already a part of the racer group (being an up-and-comer on the national road race scene) and Danny Coe would soon become an official RR hanger-on; they would earn masthead positions in following years. Later on, Buzz Buzzelli, Mark Lindemann and Ken Vreeke joined the staff, and they too were made of the right stuff; all three continue working within the industry and I consider them among my best and closest friends. But it was that aforementioned group that was tasked with wrangling words and photos under Phil Schilling when I arrived 1979. Paul Halesworth ran the art department at the time; a consummate professional he. Later, Tom Saputo came on board and he was as talented a magazine designer as anyone could ever wish for. It was a privilege just to know these people, but I was double blessed to be allowed to join this team.

My first day on the job left no doubt in my mind that Cycle as an institution boasted a genuine editorial legacy as The Journal of Record. Now as then, that was what set Cycle apart. We editors were never assigned a word count for road tests or technical features, and our assignment was simple: Get the story; get it all; get it right. And oh, by the way, make it entertaining as well.

And get it right is what we did, sometimes even to the displeasure of VIAs-Very Important Advertisers. If in the course of our testing we discovered some significant flaw within a product, we addressed it straight up front for what it was, albeit in polite, precise terms. The man responsible for enacting such high levels of editorial honesty was the publisher, Tom Sargent, and on more than one occasion he met the big-time pressure from advertisers head-on in order to back up his editors, even if it cost the magazine hard, cold cash. The integrity of the magazine was all-important in the long run.

Back in the day, no newbie could simply waltz in at Cycle magazine and write a road test; you had to earn your spurs fair and square. After an undetermined time of writing lesser features, you may-or may not-be invited to write your first road test. This was privileged status, the pinnacle of the motorcycle writing art, and you were required to fully demonstrate your riding, research, technical and writing expertise. And so in due time Gordon Jennings guided me through my first evaluation, on the Moto Morini 3 1/2 Sport-hardly a lot of jeopardy wrapped up in that assignment, whatnot?

Moto Morini notwithstanding, that experience and many future days spent with Jennings have to rank as some of the greatest experiences in my life. Working in the company of Jennings was like having Mr. Wizard at your side, ready to bail you out (journalistically speaking, at least) whenever you got in over your head. Every meeting, every engine tear-down, every phone conversation was a graduate-level course in engineering, journalism and human behavior all rolled into one. Jennings could be witty, insightful, acerbic, highly instructional and hilariously entertaining all at once. However, he also did not suffer fools, so as a young associate editor I worked very hard to not behave foolishly, at least not very often. A truly great man, gone too soon.

At various moments during my time on staff at Cycle I may have had an inkling of all that I truly had, but it wasn't until long after my tenure had run its course that I realized fully I would never again in my life be surrounded by a group of people that would be so incredibly bright, hard-working, knowledgeable and experienced, wholeheartedly dedicated to the word-making craft as well as the sport-and could also ride a bike like jet-stink to boot. To you long-time fans of the written word who still mourn the passing of Cycle magazine, I give you my thanks; I too grieve what was lost.