AMC Outdoors, July/August 2003

By Katharine Wroth

He had pedaled 220 miles over two days, lost his route along the way, and run out of food. But he had also raised $10,000 for cancer research and shared triumph with 35 fellow riders. In short, he was pumped. On a Sunday night in 1980, just after creating New England's first bike-a-thon, Billy Starr told a friend, "I'm going to make this big."

More than two decades later, he has kept that promise. Today the Boston Chapter member is the executive director of the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC), an annual August ride across the Bay State. This year's donations, collected by 3,600 cyclists from 37 states, should bring the total raised for Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to more than $100 million. The PMC raises more than any other athletic charity event in the U.S., and donates 92 percent of its proceeds — far more than similar benefits.

Starr, 52, who oversees a small staff and thousands of volunteers, has ridden and raised funds every year, along with six others who joined him on the original adventure. His motivation is personal: he lost his mother, uncle, and cousin to cancer in the 1970s. And it was through the outdoors, he says, that he found solace and purpose. Always an athlete, he "drifted into" backpacking, climbing, and biking. He credits a rainy AT trek from Baxter State Park to Pinkham Notch with teaching him vital lessons. He learned, accepting coffee from a stranger after a grueling stretch, that a small kindness can seem enormous to someone in need. When his three friends quit the hike, he learned that people must have a vested interest in such endeavors. And he learned that the outdoors doesn't pamper.

Today Starr, who skis Tuckerman Ravine every spring to celebrate his birthday, has used those lessons to turn a personal crusade into a multi-million-dollar success, and he shows no signs of straying from this path. "I won't allow triumphs and tragedies to take me over the edge," he says. "There's too big a picture to focus on."

—Katharine Wroth is Senior Editor of AMC Outdoors.