Atascosa Voice 4: Bob Byrd

What Can't We Do?

Mr. Byrd speaks at the ribbon-cutting event for the new Skate bowl at Bob and Verna Byrd Skatepark.

It was a hot Tuesday afternoon, and I had just finished cleaning pools with Carl (Atascosa Voice #3).

Earlier that week, I’d texted Mr. Byrd to ask if he would be willing to meet for an interview. I told him about the Atascosa Voices project and that I would love to include him.

He responded that he would be honored to meet.

I entered Pleasant Perk Coffee Shop off Highway 97 as it passes through town. I ordered a Sprite and waited for Mr. Byrd to arrive.

The tables were full of people talking. Papers were spread out in front of them. Hands waved through the air. Meetings, I supposed. Small-town life at its finest.

I found a table in the back and sat down with my notes. A ceramic tea kettle sat atop the glazed wooden table, a nice touch. I checked my phone.

Still nothing from Mr. Byrd.

It was 3:15. I decided to call and make sure we hadn’t gotten our wires crossed.

“Mr. Byrd, I’m at the Pleasant Perk. We were meeting today, right?”

He laughed when he realized the mishap.

He was sitting at the IHOP a few blocks down, waiting for me.

I drove to the restaurant, parked, and went inside.

Mr. Byrd was talking to the friendly waitress at his table. I sat down while he looked over the menu. He apologized for the mix-up.

“Once I get something on my mind, it’s just stuck,” he said about coming to IHOP.

I sat down, and we caught up before the interview.

I met Mr. Byrd when I first moved here in 2021. The skatepark was one of the things I was most excited about when I moved to Pleasanton. I met Mr. Byrd by proximity.

Since moving here, I’ve skidded my bare skin across the coping next to the big star and rammed my fingers when I hit the wall after attempting the small stair jump. I’ve fallen off my bike so many times in that skatepark.

So, when I started thinking about a great subject for this project, Mr. Byrd was an obvious choice. I wanted to know more about the man behind the skatepark.

The waitress came back to take our order. Mr. Byrd looked at me over his menu. I shook my head and said no thanks. I ordered water.

Mr. Byrd drank his tea as he folded his menu and handed it back to her.

I think he really wanted a pancake.

I hit record.

“So, tell me the story about how you came up with the idea for a skatepark.”

I had heard the story, as many in the community had. It was almost like an initiation into Mr. Byrd’s community circle. But this time, I got the extended version.

The story goes that Bob and Verna Byrd were walking through Atascosa River Park with their beagle when they encountered some kids causing trouble. Mr. Byrd asked them politely to knock it off.

They responded with an expletive, telling him exactly where he could go and exactly what he could do when he got there.

“I remember thinking very clearly, I used to be right where those kids are,” he said.

The kids carried skateboards.

Mr. Byrd took that and had a thought.

Around town, many signs say, “No skateboarding.”

For kids carrying skateboards, those signs told them there was nowhere for them to go.

A kid sits on a skateboard taking a break during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Mr. Byrd thought, “These kids just need a place to go.”

He had already been running a local basketball club at the park with youth participants. His experience organizing athletic clubs gave him the rest of the idea.

A skatepark with a community around it could be the place these kids needed to go.

In those moments, Born to Ride was born.

During our conversation, Mr. Byrd discussed his membership in the Navigators. I had always wondered what the ministry part of Born to Ride meant. I wondered if they had a church somewhere, some sort of sanctuary.

Turns out, I was riding my bike on it.

He said he’d been a member of the Navigators since 1979, bringing his ministry work with him to South Texas.

I was curious about his path to Pleasanton. How, of all places, did he end up here?

He moved here from San Antonio in 2004 and has been working in the area since then.

That made me wonder about his path to San Antonio, since 2004 still left a lot of road behind him.

“And before that?” I asked.

His early days were tough, he said, growing up in Oakland, California.

“The Treasurer of Darkness,” he called himself back then.

He could relate to people who had done drugs, people who had been in jail, anybody, anywhere. He felt that was part of why it was so easy for him to accommodate skate culture.

His relationship with the church back then was that they were all hypocrites—people who went to church but didn’t practice the word.

One day, his perspective changed.

After getting into a little trouble, his cousin forced him to go to church. They went to four different churches in Oakland, all of which Mr. Byrd wanted nothing to do with.

Until one day, he entered a Baptist church that felt different from all the rest.

So he went back.

During that visit, he said he felt an overwhelming sense come over him.

The next day, the pastor of the church visited Mr. Byrd at the print shop where he was working.

The pastor would later mentor him and teach him how to use the Bible. Mr. Byrd didn’t know anything about the book, so the pastor taught him.

When he finally decided to become a Christian, Mr. Byrd said he felt that the old, nervous, guilty, afraid man had been transformed into someone more receptive and forgiving.

Mr. Byrd met Verna at church. He joined the choir because he wanted to meet her.

She was a choir singer.

She was the voice saying, “Sweetie, you can do anything God wants you to do.”

He had been doing mission work in Pleasanton and San Antonio since 1979. Verna was his partner in that work for most of it.

The spark those teenagers created in him gave him a focused path. He thought he could give them the place they needed to go.

Phase one of the skatepark came from that spark.

“So, tell me about the beginning of the project,” I said.

It wasn’t easy getting a skatepark built in Pleasanton.

After being turned down, Mr. Byrd collected signatures around town and eventually in the schools. He took the completed lists and $2,000 in fundraised money to show the seriousness of the need.

Eventually, the first phase was built.

The giant Texas star waves at traffic on Bensdale. Occasionally, a brave skater drops in off the star, defying gravity. A spine, rails, stair step, and large quarter pipe intimidate anyone looking down over the edge.

The concrete is pristine and white.

After the park was completed, Mr. Byrd began collecting the names of the skaters he met there. He wrote their names on 3-by-5 cards and handed them to Verna each night.

And each night, she prayed for them.

“What do you think she would say about seeing your names on the skatepark today?” I asked.

“She would say, ‘I told you so.’”

He smiled when talking about the positive impact his presence was having on the kids.

“The skatepark is my pulpit.”

I asked him to describe a typical afternoon at the park.

“I go down there every day. If I see anyone alive and well down there, I pull in off the street, and I go in, and I start working.”

That brought me back to an afternoon session at the skatepark.

It was a hot, sunny weekday. Five skaters sat in the shade beneath the large oak tree on the small version of the big star. Skid marks tracked down the center of it.

One boy sat at the pavilion with a book and backpack.

The pavilion next to the skatepark. A recent addition providing shade and a place to sit. Decorated and serving free popcorn and grab bags to the skaters during the ribbon-cutting event shown in the photo.

I did a small wheelie and looked over at the boys for applause.

Nothing.

I was out of breath and pulled my bicycle to the edge.

During the break, I overheard the skaters talking.

The kids mentioned some kind of race, and one of the boys said, “Oh, Mr. Byrd is getting a pump track. It’s going to be really cool!”

The Texas heat was scorching us all.

The kids started talking about water and how they could just skate to the Circle K across Highway 281.

I had my hands over my handlebars, tongue out, gasping for air.

Then I saw Mr. Byrd’s Honda drive by on Bensdale.

“Bet he comes in here,” I thought.

He did exactly that.

He parked by the pavilion.

One of the boys recognized his car and yelled, “That’s Mr. Byrd!”

The boy walked to the trunk and came back with water for everyone.

Even me.

Mr. Byrd drove off into the wind like a phantom water carrier.

Back at IHOP, I sipped my water and looked over my notes.

Mr. Byrd told me the story of getting the city on board with the skatepark.

A city councilman told him he would never get a skatepark in town.

“Boy, I jumped all over that word: never. I just love to hear it. It just gets my adrenaline boiling.”

To get the city behind his idea, Mr. Byrd took kids to Walmart on skateboards to showcase their skills. He collected signatures around town and kept showing up with evidence that he wasn’t going away.

I asked Mr. Byrd how he thought the community he built would continue as his legacy.

He was almost offended that I didn’t think he had another good thirty years in him.

I believe him.

He said his mother lived to 102.

His faith stood strong even in the face of the question.

“If he’s [God’s] raised this, he’s going to supply that,” he said with certainty.

I believed him.

Mentorship is a huge part of what Mr. Byrd is trying to build at the skatepark.

A few older skaters, adults, form the foundation of the mentoring. Kids who show strong leadership skills then become mentors themselves.

I’ve interacted with many of these kids and have been struck by their kindness and generosity.

During the interview, Mr. Byrd handed me a printed flyer for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the park.

I attended.

I watched the skaters interact with one another.

A smaller boy was skating on the ground, blocking another kid’s run from the box jump.

Two small boys look down the ramp, contemplating the drop.

“Excuse me!” the child called.

I watched little kids attempt kickflips and fall hard on the concrete. The whole park seemed to respond. Helping hands reached down to pull them up. Once they were safe, the mentors encouraged them to continue.

“Try again!”

A mentor helping a student learn basic skateboarding skills.

I saw a mentor demonstrate a solid kickflip while two tiny girls watched him and encouraged each other when they tried.

The young boy from earlier stood at the edge of a ramp, waiting to drop in.

His neon-green helmet had a full spiked mohawk.

One of the older skaters has always had a solid ride. I’ve watched him here and there when I’ve been at the park. He kickflips over the big box and lands solidly on the other side.

Mr. Byrd mentioned him during our interview, saying that people like him will probably be the next leaders of the park.

One of the skatepark’s regulars during a sick kickflip over the stair drop.

Standing there, watching the kids, I finally understood the ministry.

There was no forcing anything.

I didn’t even know it was a ministry until a year after I became aware of the group.

Mr. Byrd’s focus is on mentoring the next generation of leaders and building a strong community for kids who might not otherwise have those kinds of people in their lives.

“A City on Wheels” is what he wants Pleasanton to be known for.

One of Mr. Byrd’s signs around town shows sponsors’ logos with the caption, “A city on wheels.”

The skate bowl had just opened, and he was already thinking about what could come next.

He hopes that, with all the interest, Pleasanton can become a hub for skating.

He’s talking about regional leagues.

Imagine a home match between Floresville skaters and Pleasanton skaters.

The first step toward that goal, he said, would be introducing skating as an athletic elective in local schools, alongside sports like football and baseball.

It would give kids another sport to choose.

Skateboarding has become mainstream, even reaching the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Pleasanton could become part of that growing world.

The next phase would be using the skatepark and a regional league to establish Pleasanton as a training hub.

Teachers. Professional skateboarders. Kids learning the sport from scratch and working their way toward becoming professionals.

A mentor shows students proper form at the top of the big ramp.

All right here in Pleasanton, Texas.

I had stars in my eyes as I imagined the vision Mr. Byrd was sharing with me.

It would be like our own little Woodward, Pennsylvania, right here in our backyard.

The interview went on for an hour and a half.

It could have gone longer.

As we wrapped up, Mr. Byrd had laid out what he saw skateboarding becoming in the region.

But the future of Born to Ride isn’t really about skateboarding.

Not entirely.

It is about what happens when someone sees a kid who needs a place to go and decides to build one.

It is about mentorship.

It is about community.

It is about showing up.

Placard with skaters code: “Honor God, Honor your parents, respect others, and always have fun.”

For Mr. Byrd, the story of Born to Ride isn’t nearing its final chapter.

It’s still being written, one skater at a time.

After all, he asked with a smile:

“What can’t we do?”

The sign hangs on the skate bowl encouraging residents to simply, “Go Skate!”