Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 46 NOVEMBER 18, 2014 P109 and had such a long tenure at the AMA might have had more to do with his personality says former American Motorcyclist editor Greg Harrison. "E.C. [Smith] and Jules [Horky] were these big, larger-than-life personalities," Harrison explains. "I think Al was a guy who just came in and faded into the background and quietly got things done. I don't think he ever sought credit or had any desire to become well known [in motorcycling circles]. He just did his job and did it well and that was good enough for him." You recall the stories of early radio disc jockeys giving baseball play-by-play off of ticker tape? Ac- cording to former AMA President Ed Youngblood, Ismon did something similar with racing stories. "Al would write these news releases with descriptions of a Grand National simply going off lap charts," Youngblood explains. "Without ever being there, he'd kind of do some transitions and fill in some flowery language and one of his favorite terms was like "Brelsford broke out on top on lap five." But he did all those just from lap charts." Another aspect of Ismon that paid off many times in the AMA offices was the fact that he was a pack rat. "He saved a couple examples of just about ev- erything," Youngblood recalls. "You know we'd all look around and wonder where we were going to find a 19-whatever sticker of Muffler Mike to put in the magazine when we were doing a story about it. And Al would say, "Oh, I've got one." He'd open his middle desk drawer and there it would be. His middle desk drawer was kind of the archives of the organization. He was the institutional memory of the AMA. If you wanted to find out something about the history, you'd go to Al." As the years wore on Ismon found himself a vet- eran among a growing staff of young people. Is- mon had the knowledge to share, but he wasn't pushy about it and if the younger staff members didn't listen to his advice, he'd let them go ahead and learn things the hard way. "All the crew I brought in were young guys and as young guys do, we probably didn't listen to Al as much as we should have," Youngblood said. "We'd make mistakes and reinvent the wheel and probably redo things he'd already figured out. Over time we began to respect him and began to understand what he knew. He was a modest man. You'd propose something dumb and he would kind of politely inject one little piece of ad- vice and if you didn't listen he didn't argue about it. He'd go back into his office and do his thing. If he resisted change, he did it graciously. He never created conflict in the office." In the days well before computerized publish- ing and Photoshop, Al's art degree from Ohio State came in handy. If the background of a photo didn't work for the cover of the magazine for ex- ample, Al would take the 8X10 photo, get out his paint or x-acto set and carefully outline the sub- ject so they would stand out on a cover. If you go back and look at the progression of the American Motorcyclist you can clearly see the high standards Ismon produced with the maga- zine. It set quality standards that few of the other motorcycle books of the day could match. The main thing was Al was part of a hard-work- ing team, who did whatever it took to get a quality magazine out to the members of the AMA. And as anyone who has spent time in the magazine business knows, sometimes that meant burning the midnight oil on deadline as Greg Harrison re- members. "Sometimes we'd be in the office late Sunday night waiting for results to come in from a West Coast national," Harrison said. "You'd sit there until 11 or 12 o'clock waiting for the call. Al was the magazine guy. He was a nice man, I never heard anyone say anything bad about him, and I learned a lot working with him." CN WHO DIDN'T RIDE Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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