Where the hell is Dothan, Alabama? Well, to Berry Wardlaw, its home and has been since 1996 when he moved his business, Accurate Engineering, to L.A. (lower Alabama). It’s where he has produced incredible engines for just about every notable in the industry including the powerhouses for many Discovery Channel bikes, the motors for numerous winners of the AMD World Championship, the engines for two of the World’s Fastest Panhead record-holder bikes for Bikernet’s 5-Ball Racing Team and continues to manufacture some the most innovative engines in the V-Twin world.
Dothan is also where he bought a house, put down roots and took on the role of single dad as he raised Jennings, his son. It wasn’t until September, 2010 that he felt like he was really part of the community. That’s when Jennings was killed in a car accident and support for Berry in the dark days that followed came from an unexpected source. These people resented authority, routinely got chased by the cops, were outcasts from society and were passionate about riding. No, they weren’t bikers, they were skateboarders. “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” is very simply translated in the biker-to-skater dictionary as “Skate or Die”.
Skateboarding was Jennings’ passion and all of his buddies shared his obsession. In the weeks following the funeral, the house and shop were filled with skateboarders and kids that just wanted to be around ‘Mr. Berry’. Berry fully expected the number of kids to dwindle as the weeks melted into months, another school year started and the teenagers’ interest in skating waned. Boy was he wrong. Berry’s new circle of friends ranged in age from 14 to 20 and was multiplying quickly. From these kids, Berry became aware of the plight of the skateboarder and vowed to help.
Skateboarding is essentially illegal. Skaters like to skate ‘street obstacles’ such as stairs and steps, railings, walls, benches, etc… All of these things are found at businesses and churches, public buildings and private property, parking lots and loading docks…and they are all off limits to the skaters and illegal to skate on. This forces them to skate in dimly lit places at night to avoid detection. They get run off by business owners and get busted, ticketed or have their property confiscated by the local PD. They are shunned from the general public and considered dangerous by the citizens. Sound familiar? They are the bikers of the sports world. Berry was going to change all that. He was going to build a skatepark in Dothan, Alabama.
This new-found purpose merged with his initial plans to memorialize and remember the life of his son. The Jennings Wardlaw Memorial Skatepark project was born. (Ta-da!) Now what? What did Berry know about skateparks or city planning commissions? Ask him about rocker arm tolerances or gear ratios (or anything else about any motorcycle) and he’ll blurt out an answer before you finish asking the question…but grades of concrete for the best skating surface or soil sample analysis or the best place for a hubba with a grindable surface? What?!
He had a lot to learn and became a quick study. Ken Clark, a.k.a. ‘old Dude’ by Jennings and the area skaters because he was over 30 and still shared their skateboarding passion, had served as a mentor and a role model for many of the kids. He soon became Berry’s close friend, confidant, and teacher of all things skateboard. Together they opened ‘Jennings Skate Shop’ selling skateboard equipment and goodies with profits going to the Jennings Wardlaw Memorial Youth Park, which was opened as a non-profit organization.
They had meeting with the mayors of Dothan and surrounding towns and appeared before the city’s planning and parks committees. Tentative approval for the skatepark spurred them on to buy an entire skatepark in Homestead, Florida, disassemble it over the course of two 102 degree weekends, transport it back to Dothan and unload it in the back of Accurate Engineering. A special thanks to Warren Lane and Nick for helping with that monumental task! Mission impossible changed to mission accomplished.
The final meeting with the Dothan city council committees was scheduled for October 13th at high noon. It had already been leaked that they were going to give the okay to pull the trigger on the project. The city’s responsibility ended at leasing land for the project. Berry and Ken would have been up against funding the rest of the park and assuming all legal and financial/insurance responsibilities…forever. It would have been like building a motorcycle from parts, paying for it out of your own pocket, handing the keys over to someone else, performing all the maintenance and repairs pro bono forever and keeping the insurance current. Thankfully, a savior came out of California. His name was Jamie Thomas.
Jamie Thomas also calls Dothan his hometown. He lived there until he took the skateboarding world by storm. He parlayed his skating talent not only into becoming one of the top professional skaters on the planet but becoming a mogul in the skateboard industry. He is the owner and president of Black Box Distribution, which was created in 2000 and is the parent company of Mystery Skateboards, $lave Skateboards, Zero Skateboards, Threat By Zero, Insight Clothing, and Fallen Footwear. His business prowess earned him a 2006 regional “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Ernst and Young and he‘s currently on the Board of Directors of The Tony Hawk Foundation. (Not bad for a cat that hasn’t even hit his 38th birthday!) Could it get any better? Yup. He rides Harleys, too, and road trips with his buddies whenever he can break away from his other obligations.
One phone call from Jamie turned into many and culminated in his trip to Dothan. He and Drew Burke, his long time brother and also a Dothan native, set about adding nitrous to our ride. Jamie’s presentation to the city was of a very different skatepark plan that wouldn’t saddle Berry with the entire burden and would endure for decades. In motorcycle terms, Jamie would design the bike, Berry would solicit sponsors for the build, and the city would lay out the balance and drive away. Jamie made a huge impact on the project but made an even bigger impact on the area kids.
Jennings’ hero is also the hero of skateboarders around the world so Jamie’s ’meet and greet’ at Jennings Skate Shop (located in the Accurate Engineering storefront) was a day to remember for the more than 200 skaters that attended. Jamie is the guy that they’ve seen in all the magazines and watched on all the DVD’s since they could pick up a skateboard. He’s the cat that they pretend to be when they’re skating. Now, he was there…right there…autographing their posters and shirts! It was huge in their lives and an afternoon they’ll remember forever.
There are more meetings and red tape to get through with the city but the undertaking now has a very big gun in its holster. Jamie has used his connections in the skateboard industry to slash the current plan’s big price tag. He’s worked out a deal so that the 10,000 sq. ft., concrete, low maintenance skatepark he put forth can be constructed for half of the retail cost of $500,000. Although $250,000 is still quite a big ticket, they’re committed to getting it done. When asked about he was going to raise the cash, Berry answered, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”.
If you want to donate to the park and save Berry from having to eat some spoonfuls of elephant, you can drop a tax deductible check to: Jennings Wardlaw Memorial Youth Park, Inc., 410 Southgate Rd., Dothan, AL, 36301.
Thanks to all the people that continue to bust their ass on this venture and got it off the starting line. Thanks to Jamie Thomas for shifting the project into 6th gear and twisting the throttle. And thanks to the love of a man for his son for getting this whole thing kickstarted in the first place. I’ll end this the way that all the skaters around Dothan end their text messages…RIP Jennings.
