Fast Fete

Bo Jackson knows Nike Air shoes because inventor Frank Rudy got fired.

Rudy was not a happy guy when he sat down in his Northridge home 22 years ago and invented the patented cushioned soles that go into those billion-dollar sellers, the Nike Airs. He had just been laid off as a corporate director at North American Rockwell--after 20 years in the aerospace industry--and hadn’t a clue as to what to do next.

While engaged in some heavy head-hanging, he was distracted by his wife’s complaints about her new ski boots. They were, she said, as comfortable as the Chinese foot binding torture, so Rudy, with time on his hands and a background in research and development, got busy trying to save her soles.

By 1979, almost 10 years to the day he began his foot feat, Rudy’s Air-Sole was in shoe stores across the nation in the Nike Tailwind sport shoe. Since then the Nike Air line has become a billion-dollar-a-year seller, according to its inventor.

“When I first took the Air-Sole to Beaverton, Ore., to Nike President Philip Knight, he didn’t know if I was a charlatan or on to something really big,” Rudy said.

Knight did offer, however, to give Rudy an assistant and the time and money to try to make it work.

“My assistant was a 22-year-old marathoner who had been selling sneakers at one of the local Nike outlets,” says Rudy. The folks at Harvard Business School--who periodically study Knight’s unusual administrative techniques--might have lifted an eyebrow over the odd couple, but for some reason it seemed to work.

“We worked together to incorporate my discovery into Nike’s shoes,” Rudy said of his assistant, Joe Skaja. “I would tinker and then he would run, then I would tinker again.”

Hot Feet

The Alisa Ann Ruch California Burn Foundation in Canoga Park can thank Jeff Riechmann’s speed habit for a donation of $10,000 or so each year.

It started three years ago when Riechmann, a Kern County firefighter, was ragging on pal Bill Huth, who owns Willow Springs International Raceway in the far reaches of the Antelope Valley. Riechmann, an Air Force reservist, was sky high after a ride in an F-16 fighter, and he told Huth that next he wanted to learn to race cars.

Huth owns a fleet of race-ready Toyotas used for the Willow Springs race car driving school. The school annually trains participants in the Long Beach Grand Prix celebrity sprint, and Riechmann was interested in getting in on the fun.

Huth offered to let Riechmann take the course, with one big string attached. Riechmann would have to get some of his firefighting buddies together and sponsor a charity race. The Southern California firemen who sold the most tickets could take the driving course and race one another, he said.

Once Riechmann stopped laughing and thought it over, he went to his boss, Kern County Fire Chief Tom McCarthy, who thought it was a great idea.

All of a sudden Riechmann was too busy organizing the event to worry about hotfooting it around the track himself. The first year, almost $8,000 was raised for the firefighters’ educational and research charity, the Ruch burn foundation, named after a 7-year-old who died in a back-yard barbecue fire in 1970.

In addition to the Firefighters Grand Prix, that first event was highlighted by an impromptu race of antique fire engines by Bobby Unser and Rodger Ward, and the annual antique fire engine race was born.

The seven winning firefighters of this year’s ticket-selling contest get to go through the driving school and compete Oct. 27 at the raceway against last year’s winner, Mark Kolb.

If you buy tickets at the track on race day, you will get to see all the regularly scheduled races as well as the firefighters and fire engines. But the only way the burn foundation gets the money is if you purchase tickets from a firefighter beforehand, Riechmann said.

For information, call Riechmann at (805) 273-7089 or the Burn Foundation at (818) 883-7700.

Revolutionary Psych

Agoura Hills’ Betty Aviad just returned from a trip to Russia where she was appalled and cheered by what she saw.

The psychotherapist made the trip with other therapists, and she was shocked by the way the Soviets live, squeezed into “horrible, cookie cutter, concrete jungles where everyone lives on top of one another.”

Aviad said her Russian counterparts told her that the claustrophobic atmosphere has had a strange effect on marriages, creating a lack of closeness and openness between husband and wives.

Aviad and other members of the Valley Assn. of Marriage and Family Therapists traveling group were, however, delighted with the warmth of the people.

“We were given parties in Moscow and Kiev and St. Petersburg and invited to many homes,” she said.

It was a busman’s holiday for the group, though, because their main objective was to teach their Russian counterparts how to set up private practices and help educate the public about mental health care.

Many Russians are not familiar with the benefits of therapy, she said, because it has a low priority on the national health-care scale. “The Soviets were mostly interested in research,” Aviad said. “They did not see the necessity for people to get counseling.”

Mud Whomping

A rodeo, parade, music and dancing will take place this weekend when the Canyon Country Chamber of Commerce holds its 27th Frontier Days.

But the real excitement, a chamber official said, is the Sunday Mud Bogs performance at 4 p.m. For those not up on this exercise, it is, according to the chamber’s Bonnie Barnard, “when a bunch of big guys get on a bunch of big motor things, with really big tires and then drive around and see how dirty they can get.”

Overheard

“Certainly.”

--Socially correct sales clerk

to man who asked to

try on dresses at Ann Taylor

in the Promenade Mall