Photo: National Museum of American History
Sherm Poppen was simply trying to find a way to keep his daughters occupied when he invented what would one day become the snowboard at his home in Muskegon, Michigan, on Christmas Day 1965.
It was there that Poppen, who died on Wednesday at age 89 due to complications from a stroke, according toSnowboarder Magazine, was compelled to find an activity for his daughters — Wendy, 10, and Laurie, 5 — because his wife, Nancy, was a few days out from giving birth to their third daughter and she wanted some peace and quiet.
“You can imagine — it’s Christmas, and my wife is pretty uptight, and she said, ‘Sherman, you’ve got to take these kids out of the house,’ ” Poppen toldSteamboat Pilot & Todayin 2009, according to theNew York Times. “And we were having a huge snowstorm on the shores of Lake Michigan.”
Because the snow was thin that day, sledding wouldn’t work, he recalled toThe Denver Post. So, Poppen nailed together a pair of skies to create a board that his two daughters could stand upon, allowing them to surf down the snowy dunes just outside of their home.
The nailed together skis gave his daughters some buoyancy on the thin snow, and as they played, Nancy would come up with the name for her husband’s invention: the Snurfer.
“We just went crazy,” Wendy recalled to thePostthis week. “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.”
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Poppen would soon make small adjustments to the Snurfer, such as adding a tether to help riders steer down the snow. He would also recruit Wendy to demo the board when he invited executives from Brunswick Corp. to see it in action.
“I had to slide down this hill and climb back up,” Wendy told thePost. “My dad told me, ‘Keep Snurfing until I tell you to stop.’ I went up and down, up and down like 15 times; it’s freezing out. The rest is history. He sold them the patent and they produced the Snurfer.”
Poppen’s prototype, which jumpstarted the sport after he showcased it for Brunswick, is now on exhibit at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail.
source: people.com
