Lederman Rides in Alumni Race

By JARED DAVIS Palisadian-Post Intern A team of University of Pennsylvania and Bucknell alumni plan to ride across the country by bicycle from September 9 to 27 to raise $1 million in scholarship funds for each university. The seven-person team, comprising of alumni from both schools, includes Palisadian Bruce Lederman (Penn class of ’64). The riders have dedicated the 3,050-mile journey to the memory of Ed Zolla. “Ed and I were business partners and best friends for over 25 years,” Lederman said. “We bought, operated and sold businesses and owned real estate together. And we biked more than 20,000 miles together over the last 12 years.” Zolla, a graduate of Penn’s Wharton School, planned to join the race, but died suddenly at age 58 last September. His wife of 35 years, Bucknell alumna Susan Zolla, (class of ?68), will host a kick-off reception for the riders and their supporters at her Brentwood home on Saturday. Mrs. Zolla owns the Channel Road Inn in Santa Monica Canyon. A Pacific Palisades resident since 1983, Lederman has been biking since the age of seven. Two years ago, he and several friends rode from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Anchorage, a six-day, 465-mile ride. This upcoming ride will start in Santa Monica and end in Atlantic City, N.J., crossing 14 states, a desert, and mountain ranges with 10,000-foot-high passes. The riders will average about 12 hours of riding a day, and the entire trip is estimated to take 19 days. The Bucknell-Penn Alumni Bike Race Across America for Scholarship, as the trip has been named, is believed to be the first such effort by a group of university alumni to raise scholarship funds. “The money is for scholarships for students who would otherwise not be able to attend a school like Penn or Bucknell,” Lederman said. Lederman said he has been training seriously for the last six months for this event, but previously attended a week-long training camp run by Lance Armstrong’s coach, Chris Carmichael. In college, Lederman was a varsity wrestler during his freshman and sophomore years, but a knee injury kept him from wrestling a single match. “My roommate [Ted Lansky], who will be riding with us to Philly, was an All-American wrestler for Penn and never lost a dual meet in high school or college,” Lederman said. Lederman has three sons: his eldest, 25, was once an intern at the Palisadian-Post; his middle, 24, is a movie production assistant in New York; and his youngest, 21, is a junior on the varsity tennis team at Yale. Lederman, a Harvard Law School graduate (class of ?67), worked at the Los Angeles law firm of Latham and Watkins for over 30 years before retiring in 2000 as a senior partner. Since then, he has co-founded and sold a number of companies. Currently Lederman is a co-founder of a publicly traded company, HD Partners Acquisition Corporation (stock symbol HDP), that has signed an agreement to purchase the professional racing division of the National Hot Rod Association and all of their race tracks for over $120 million. HDP is traded on the American Stock Exchange. The Penn riders, including Lederman, plan to arrive at the Penn campus on a Thursday. The Bucknell riders will finish in Atlantic City and then ride their bicycles into a Bucknell football game at Memorial Stadium at the Bucknell campus on Saturday, September 29. The riders’ progress can be followed through a Web site (www.alumnibikerace.com), which will provide daily reports on the riders, with blogs, pictures, and video. Three recent Bucknell graduates who were scholarship recipients will be driving the vehicles to support the riders. The Web site will also show a daily tally of the amount raised through midnight September 27. Contributions can be made by visiting the Web site.