Larry Adam Kirsch

Bear was born April 18, 1947 in Seattle, Washington. He was the only child of Lou and Bea Kirsch from the Seattle/Spokane, WA. Area.

In 1951 the family moved to Granada Hills CA, where father Lou took a job at Lockheed Aircraft Co. Bear lived in the same house on Yarmouth Street where he grew up until just recently when he became ill. He never married and had no children.

After graduating from Granda Hills High school in 1965, Bear attended the Trade tech. machinist program. His interest in motorcycles lead him to take a job at Filtron Inc. where he worked with a small group of other innovative people in developing the automotive foam air filter, something now almost universally adopted. Bear quickly became a master fabricator, there seemed to nothing he could not build or fix.

When the motorcycle off road craze started, partly as a result of the movie On Any Sunday, Larry and high school friend Al Goodson started GOKI in the Kirsch garage, manufacturing motorcycle accessories. The initial product was the Goki air fork cap. They quickly outgrew the garage and moved to Cozycroft Ave. in Chatsworth. Other products followed in short order, Goki expanded into products for watercraft, ATV and electric starter kits for three and four wheel off road vehicles.

In 1984 Larry and friends designed and built a Bonneville land speed record motorcycle, competing in the 125cc supercharged class that achieved 108 mph, a record which stood for several years.

In 1995, Bear with partner Mike Giem designed and built a new line of downhill mountain bikes under the name Storm Cycles.

As part of development and promotion of Goki products, Bear became involved in sponsorships. There are many riders both on dirt and water who not only rode and helped develop Goki products, but became lifelong friends with Bear.

His mechanical ingenuity and cleverness came to good use during this time when Dean Goldsmith connected Bear with the camera car industry, which resulted in many innovative new camera car designs used in action movies such as Days of Thunder and many, many commercials.

Bear was a member of the LA Old-timers Motocross club, where he competed regularly and also served as the Secretary for 2009.

A celebration of Bear’s life is planned to take place in San Fernando Valley in late January, details will be on Larry’s Face book.

Larry was a kind and generous man with a big heart and he will be missed by his large group of friends.

“A Bear is strong, quiet and always there, there is no better friend than a Bear”