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The "grandfather of snowboarding," Sherman Poppen dies at 89
Last edited Mon Aug 12, 2019, 12:01 PM - Edit history (7)
Two weeks ago. I didn't know until I saw the WaPo tweet last night:
Sherm Poppen, a grandfather of snowboarding, dies at 89
Link to tweet
Obituaries
Sherm Poppen, a grandfather of snowboarding, dies at 89
He bound together a pair of skis to create the Snurfer, a precursor to the snowboard.
Sherm Poppen, inventor of the Snurfer, with his daughter Wendy at the starting line of a Snurfing contest in the late 1960s. (Family photo)
By Harrison Smith
August 11 at 6:38 PM
On Christmas morning 1965, Sherm Poppen bound together a pair of discount-store skis and created what became known as the Snurfer, combining elements of skateboarding, surfing and slalom water skiing to invent a smooth-riding precursor to the snowboard. ... “I lived on the shore of Lake Michigan, and I’d always wished I could surf,” Mr. Poppen later told Snow magazine. That day, “I looked at the snow on the dunes behind my house and it dawned on me that we had a permanent wave right there.”
Over the next decade and a half, more than 750,000 Snurfers — a portmanteau of snow and surf, with no relation to the blue, mushroom-dwelling Smurfs — were sold nationwide. Historians credit Mr. Poppen’s invention with spurring the development of snowboarding, a sport that nets hundreds of millions of dollars in annual merchandise sales and is featured at the Winter X Games and Olympics.
Mr. Poppen, who never became wealthy from the invention, had little interest in launching a sport or business empire when he used a piece of floor molding to screw skis together in his garage. Instead, his work was driven by a desire to entertain his 5- and 10-year-old daughters — and to keep them out of their Muskegon, Mich., house while Mr. Poppen’s pregnant wife rested inside. ... “When I saw how much fun the kids had Christmas Day,” he later told the journal Skiing Heritage in 2008, “I spent the next week in Goodwill and everywhere else buying up every water ski I could find.”
Mr. Poppen was 89 when he died July 31 at his home in Griffin, Ga., where he had lived for about a decade, ever since declining health forced him off the slopes. The cause was complications of a stroke, his family said.
....
... [T]he Snurfer made its way to future snowboard innovators, including Jeff Grell, Chris Sanders and Bob Weber, and Mr. Poppen helped organize Snurfing competitions in Muskegon. Tinkerers such as Tom Sims and Dimitrije Milovich developed hands-free models in the wake of Mr. Poppen’s creation. And Jake Burton Carpenter, who received a Snurfer at 14 and soon launched his own company, Burton Snowboards, helped popularize the modern snowboard and bring it to mountains across the country.
“I always felt there was an opportunity for it to be better marketed, for serious technology to be applied to it, so Snurfing could become a legitimate sport instead of a cheap toy,” Burton told Sports Illustrated in 1997. “I knew there was an opportunity there. I couldn’t believe Brunswick never took advantage of it.”
Mr. Poppen, who devoted most of his career to running an industrial-gas supply company, generally seemed unbothered that his creation became successful only after others developed it further.
“It was Jake’s perseverance that got us on the chairlift,” he told a Steamboat Springs, Colo., newspaper in 2009. “Otherwise [snowboarders] would still be hiking up the hill.” Burton, he later told FNRad, “saw a future that frankly I dreamed about but didn’t think was possible.” [https://www.buzzsprout.com/277361/1496590]
....
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Follow https://twitter.com/harrisondsmith
Sherm Poppen, a grandfather of snowboarding, dies at 89
He bound together a pair of skis to create the Snurfer, a precursor to the snowboard.
Sherm Poppen, inventor of the Snurfer, with his daughter Wendy at the starting line of a Snurfing contest in the late 1960s. (Family photo)
By Harrison Smith
August 11 at 6:38 PM
On Christmas morning 1965, Sherm Poppen bound together a pair of discount-store skis and created what became known as the Snurfer, combining elements of skateboarding, surfing and slalom water skiing to invent a smooth-riding precursor to the snowboard. ... “I lived on the shore of Lake Michigan, and I’d always wished I could surf,” Mr. Poppen later told Snow magazine. That day, “I looked at the snow on the dunes behind my house and it dawned on me that we had a permanent wave right there.”
Over the next decade and a half, more than 750,000 Snurfers — a portmanteau of snow and surf, with no relation to the blue, mushroom-dwelling Smurfs — were sold nationwide. Historians credit Mr. Poppen’s invention with spurring the development of snowboarding, a sport that nets hundreds of millions of dollars in annual merchandise sales and is featured at the Winter X Games and Olympics.
Mr. Poppen, who never became wealthy from the invention, had little interest in launching a sport or business empire when he used a piece of floor molding to screw skis together in his garage. Instead, his work was driven by a desire to entertain his 5- and 10-year-old daughters — and to keep them out of their Muskegon, Mich., house while Mr. Poppen’s pregnant wife rested inside. ... “When I saw how much fun the kids had Christmas Day,” he later told the journal Skiing Heritage in 2008, “I spent the next week in Goodwill and everywhere else buying up every water ski I could find.”
Mr. Poppen was 89 when he died July 31 at his home in Griffin, Ga., where he had lived for about a decade, ever since declining health forced him off the slopes. The cause was complications of a stroke, his family said.
....
... [T]he Snurfer made its way to future snowboard innovators, including Jeff Grell, Chris Sanders and Bob Weber, and Mr. Poppen helped organize Snurfing competitions in Muskegon. Tinkerers such as Tom Sims and Dimitrije Milovich developed hands-free models in the wake of Mr. Poppen’s creation. And Jake Burton Carpenter, who received a Snurfer at 14 and soon launched his own company, Burton Snowboards, helped popularize the modern snowboard and bring it to mountains across the country.
“I always felt there was an opportunity for it to be better marketed, for serious technology to be applied to it, so Snurfing could become a legitimate sport instead of a cheap toy,” Burton told Sports Illustrated in 1997. “I knew there was an opportunity there. I couldn’t believe Brunswick never took advantage of it.”
Mr. Poppen, who devoted most of his career to running an industrial-gas supply company, generally seemed unbothered that his creation became successful only after others developed it further.
“It was Jake’s perseverance that got us on the chairlift,” he told a Steamboat Springs, Colo., newspaper in 2009. “Otherwise [snowboarders] would still be hiking up the hill.” Burton, he later told FNRad, “saw a future that frankly I dreamed about but didn’t think was possible.” [https://www.buzzsprout.com/277361/1496590]
....
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Follow https://twitter.com/harrisondsmith
I have a Snurfer. I found one thrown out for the city's special pickup about fifteen years ago. Mine is yellow.
SPORTS | OUTDOORS
The “grandfather of snowboarding” Sherman Poppen dies at 89
Poppen’s invention the Snurfer was the precursor to the modern snowboard
By JOHN MEYER | jmeyer@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: August 5, 2019 at 4:15 pm | UPDATED: August 6, 2019 at 9:04 am
Sherman R. Poppen, considered by winter sports enthusiasts to be the “grandfather of snowboarding” for his invention of the Snurfer more than 50 years ago, died July 31, 2019. He was 89. (Photo courtesy of Julie Poppen)
Sherman R. Poppen, who would come to be known as the “grandfather of snowboarding,” was just trying to get his daughters out of the house to give his pregnant wife some peace and quiet on Christmas Day in 1965 when he hit on the idea that became the Snurfer and set in motion the evolution of a new snow sport.
Poppen, who died Wednesday at age 89 in Griffin, Ga., took a pair of skis belonging to one of his daughters and nailed them together with pieces of wood at the tips and tails so Wendy, age 10, and Laurie, 5, could ride thin snow on sand dunes behind their home in Muskegon, Mich. Poppen’s wife, Nancy, was three days shy of giving birth to their third daughter, Julie, and the girls were revved up from eating Christmas stocking candy.
“Julie wants to take credit for the whole invention,” Wendy joked in a joint interview with Julie on Monday, recalling that fateful day by the shore of Lake Michigan. “Laurie and I are bouncing off the walls because it’s winter, we’re cooped up, it’s snowy outside. Mom’s all nervous, she’s sick, and she can’t handle us leaping all over, so she said, ‘Sherm, please get these kids out of the house.’ We bundle up in our winter gear and go outside.”
Because the snow was thin, sleds wouldn’t run on the dune behind their house. The connected skis offered some flotation to solve the problem. ... “We just went crazy,” said Wendy, who lives in Fort Collins. “We were taking turns sliding, laughing. We lived in a teeny, tiny little cottage. My mom opens the creaky back door and says, ‘That looks like a fun toy, you should name that a Snurfer,’ for snow and surfing. It was really cool.”
Poppen owned a welding supply company and had a mind for innovation. For the next step in the development of Snurfing, he bought a used water ski, drilled a hole in the tip and attached a tether for the rider to hold.
....
“In my world, Sherman Poppen was the guy that started snowboarding,” [Jake Burton Carpenter, later the founder of Burton Snowboards] was quoted as saying last week in an obituary published by Snowboarder magazine. “He for sure changed my life by introducing the concept of surfing on snow to me. Not only did he start the sport, but he never gave up on it.”
....
In addition to being a visionary, Poppen was a civic-minded philanthropist. In Muskegon, he sold his company, Lake Welding Supply Co., to his employees. He set up a fund in Michigan to help low-income students with an aptitude for the arts. In Colorado, he was involved with SOS Outreach, an Eagle County non-profit devoted to providing adventure opportunities for at-risk kids.
....
The “grandfather of snowboarding” Sherman Poppen dies at 89
Poppen’s invention the Snurfer was the precursor to the modern snowboard
By JOHN MEYER | jmeyer@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: August 5, 2019 at 4:15 pm | UPDATED: August 6, 2019 at 9:04 am
Sherman R. Poppen, considered by winter sports enthusiasts to be the “grandfather of snowboarding” for his invention of the Snurfer more than 50 years ago, died July 31, 2019. He was 89. (Photo courtesy of Julie Poppen)
Sherman R. Poppen, who would come to be known as the “grandfather of snowboarding,” was just trying to get his daughters out of the house to give his pregnant wife some peace and quiet on Christmas Day in 1965 when he hit on the idea that became the Snurfer and set in motion the evolution of a new snow sport.
Poppen, who died Wednesday at age 89 in Griffin, Ga., took a pair of skis belonging to one of his daughters and nailed them together with pieces of wood at the tips and tails so Wendy, age 10, and Laurie, 5, could ride thin snow on sand dunes behind their home in Muskegon, Mich. Poppen’s wife, Nancy, was three days shy of giving birth to their third daughter, Julie, and the girls were revved up from eating Christmas stocking candy.
“Julie wants to take credit for the whole invention,” Wendy joked in a joint interview with Julie on Monday, recalling that fateful day by the shore of Lake Michigan. “Laurie and I are bouncing off the walls because it’s winter, we’re cooped up, it’s snowy outside. Mom’s all nervous, she’s sick, and she can’t handle us leaping all over, so she said, ‘Sherm, please get these kids out of the house.’ We bundle up in our winter gear and go outside.”
Because the snow was thin, sleds wouldn’t run on the dune behind their house. The connected skis offered some flotation to solve the problem. ... “We just went crazy,” said Wendy, who lives in Fort Collins. “We were taking turns sliding, laughing. We lived in a teeny, tiny little cottage. My mom opens the creaky back door and says, ‘That looks like a fun toy, you should name that a Snurfer,’ for snow and surfing. It was really cool.”
Poppen owned a welding supply company and had a mind for innovation. For the next step in the development of Snurfing, he bought a used water ski, drilled a hole in the tip and attached a tether for the rider to hold.
....
“In my world, Sherman Poppen was the guy that started snowboarding,” [Jake Burton Carpenter, later the founder of Burton Snowboards] was quoted as saying last week in an obituary published by Snowboarder magazine. “He for sure changed my life by introducing the concept of surfing on snow to me. Not only did he start the sport, but he never gave up on it.”
....
In addition to being a visionary, Poppen was a civic-minded philanthropist. In Muskegon, he sold his company, Lake Welding Supply Co., to his employees. He set up a fund in Michigan to help low-income students with an aptitude for the arts. In Colorado, he was involved with SOS Outreach, an Eagle County non-profit devoted to providing adventure opportunities for at-risk kids.
....
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