With nearly 40 years of local government experience, Mike Scanlon has spent much of his career working to connect people in the Kansas City metro area via trail systems.
Scanlon, who was the city administrator in Mission for nearly 10 years and a chief financial officer in Merriam for another seven, helped connect Johnson Countians with his work on the Streamway Park trail systems.
He went on to connect communities in Colorado before coming back and continuing that work in Osawatomie, Kansas. He’s now an executive director for Kansas Trails Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to connecting trails across the state.
Less than a year after retiring from local government, in March 2024, Scanlon was diagnosed with Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. Scanlon is a lifetime non-smoker, and he is currently taking a cancer therapy drug called Tagrisso — though he knows his cancer will eventually mutate.
Now, through a month-long journey to bike 700 miles of trails across Kansas, Scanlon is showcasing what he believes is a commonality between trails and cancer: Resilience.
“It’s all about resilience,” Scanlon said. “Can you work hard enough, long enough to make a trail come to fruition? That’s really sort of why I married the two things. I go, cancer’s kind of about resilience.”
Scanlon is cycling 700 miles worth of Kansas trails
Scanlon began his month-long journey to bike 700 miles’ worth of Kansas trails at Turkey Creek Streamway Park in Merriam on Sept. 15.
The Turkey Creek Streamway Trail is one of the first bike trails Scanlon and his daughters, Katie and Megan, rode together.
They rode the trail before a fence was installed, which Scanlon said he affectionately calls “the Megan fence,” because his daughter almost rode her bike off the edge of the trail and into the creek.
Scanlon said he plans to ride for roughly two to three hours daily, or between 25 to 30 miles per day. He said he’s ending his 60-trail journey in the Flint Hills.
Scanlon hopes to raise $75,000 on what he’s calling a “Ride for Resiliency” to split evenly between Kansas Trails Inc. and GO2 for Lung Cancer.
“He had the vision”
Mission City Administrator Laura Smith describes Scanlon as a visionary.
“I’m not surprised to see him tackle a labor of love like this for two causes that he’s very, very, very passionate about,” Smith said.
At an introductory lunch, before Smith applied to a job with the city in the early 2000s, Scanlon told her that if she wasn’t interested in effecting change and dealing with the potential turmoil of doing so, then this wasn’t the job for her.
The two went on to work alongside each other for the next seven years.
In that time, Scanlon — the second city administrator in the city’s history — focused on leaving Mission better than he found it, Smith said.
Scanlon helped create what is now Rock Creek Trail in Mission, which is now the subject of a future transformation.
Smith said that Scanlon was instrumental in working with former mayor Laura McConwell to buy some old school property that turned into Mohawk Park, which recently underwent a full renovation.
Smith said seeing Scanlon and his grandchildren at the Mohawk Park ribbon cutting — for a project at least two decades in the making — reminded her that “this is why we do what we do.”
“He had the vision,” Smith said. “Although it sat for many years without the ability to turn it into what it’s now become, had he not pushed the council to stretch themselves and acquire that property, we wouldn’t be able to celebrate everything that we have in Mohawk Park now.”
How to donate to Scanlon’s fundraiser
- Donate directly to Scanlon’s GoFundMe online here.
- As of Sept. 22, Scanlon has already raised $16,514, which is 22% of the way to his $75,000 goal.
- You can also watch updates on Scanlon’s journey on Kansas Trails Inc.’s YouTube.
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