The core business is printing, but the major interest is a better community.
Craig Shankles latest endeavor is to create a public bicycle loan system called Bikes That Heal for New Paltz, with donations going to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Shankles originally went to New Paltz to attend college and graduated with a fine arts degree in 1978. Shortly thereafter, he was recruited to run a local but failing movie theater, which he quickly turned around by catering to the tastes of the college crowd. But he found there was no place to print flyers for posting ads for upcoming movies on campus. So in 1980 with his wife he founded PDQ printing and copying.
“And the business took off,” said Shankles. “It seemed like I wasn”™t the only one who had the need for printing and copying quickly.”
Shankles still practices art, doing steel sculpting, but has shown his acumen as a businessman by growing PDQ into a multifaceted printing, copying and office supply headquarters for the college town and beyond. He has clients throughout the Hudson Valley. The business not only does large format printing and sign making, but is now a shipping depot as well, as the local outlet for UPS, Fed Ex and other shippers. He said it was a natural progression.
“New Paltz, in a business sense is not a rapidly growing business community,” said Shankles. “There”™s only so many dollars in the town. Its hard to find more business, so what I need to do is offer more services within the same business.”
He is also very active in community affairs, among other responsibilities serving on the board of the Taste of New Paltz fundraiser for the Chamber of Commerce, chairing the Business Expo, spearheading the Clean Sweep community cleanup day and is past president of the Arts Society of Kingston. He is presently a board member of the nonprofit New Paltz Community Foundation, raising money for worthy projects around town.
All that activity is in addition to his new work promoting Bikes That Heal. Perhaps fittingly, the bike endeavor arose during an ordinary business day at PDQ when he noticed a longtime customer, Gerry Zimmerman, did not look well. Zimmerman had recently learned he suffered from leukemia, and over the course of his subsequent treatment through bone marrow transplant, he and Shankles”™ interaction grew from a business relationship to a friendship. When he was pronounced “cured,” Zimmerman founded Bikes That Heal “as a way to give back,” he said. Shankles became president of the group.
Now in its second year of operation, the distinctive sturdy single speed white bikes with red seat and lettering can be seen in locales around town, and unfortunately, around the valley from the Mid-Hudson Bridge to Kingston, where police reported finding them.
“We put them out there and lo and behold, a bunch of them got stolen,” said Shankles. “There are all sorts of individuals in this world. It doesn”™t defeat me; it saddens me.”
It also has fueled the group”™s determination to make the program work. Among the successes, Shankles said, are insurance riders from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society covering borrowers using Bikes That Heal bicycles, an agreement by Worksman Cyles in Queens to provide bikes at cost, and the bikes themselves available at local bed and breakfasts like the Rocking Horse Ranch. There is also a list of local sponsors including the Bicyle Depot that is too long to list.
Borrowing the bike is free and the donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is voluntary, but Shankles said donations have been generous. He said the bike loan program is used in places as diverse as Paris, France; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Common to all those programs are a bike borrowing stations where a person shows some identification, or swipes a credit card that allows tracking of those who use the bikes, thus eliminating theft. Shankles said that some similar system is desired for New Paltz and that corporate funding and individual donations are being sought to help pay for it.  Â
Best of all, said Shankles, is the reward of seeing people from places as far flung as downtown New Paltz to Russia, England and Australia using the Bikes That Heal and leaving donations and notes praising the program. “We get checks, we get cash, and we get notes from people who came from all over the world, saying I love this,” said Shankles.
