![]() ![]() Sherman was inducted into the Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1995. He is survived by his second wife, Louise daughters Wendy Poppen, Laurie Poppen and husband Kelly Gorton Julie Poppen and husband Dean Pajevic stepson Patrick Kelly and wife Danielle sister, Leila Reynolds and five grandchildren, Nikolai and Erik Poppen-Chambers, Milena Pajevic, and Aaron and Jason Kelly. Poppen passed away on Jat his home in Griffin, Georgia, USA, aged 89. That’s what happened to a lot of ‘used-to-ski-snowboarders’, myself included. According to his daughter Julie, Sherman ended up loving snowboarding far more than skiing, and totally converted. Secondly, Poppen was a self-professed hardcore skier, who never seriously rode a snowboard until 1995, three decades after he invented the Snurfer. Firstly, because the invention that made his name famous was never the primary focus of his career (which was instead on the far more profitable welding company he owned). ![]() Sherman Poppen’s story is a bit ironic though – in two respects. Both made such an impression on the Brunswick executives that Poppen secured a licensing contract with the company and Brunswick began producing, distributing and selling Snurfers all over the USA. He could see the commercial potential for his Snurfer from the get-go, so he patented it in 1966 and later that same year persuaded product executives from the Brunswick Corporation to meet him at a snow-covered hill on a freezing cold day in Michigan, USA - to see the Snurfer and his oldest daughter Wendy, in action. ![]() So Sherman ended up making more Snurfers, and when he did, he made improvements, such as adding a hand-held rope to the front of the boards for better steering and control. ![]() The Snurfer was so much fun to ride that the Poppen family’s friends and neighbors - both children AND adults – wanted to slide down the snowy hills in the neighborhood on it too. Sherman Poppen and his two oldest daughters gave the world a grand Christmas gift in 1965, by laying down the roots for what would become a multi-billion dollar industry, and a way for millions of people to have a ton of fun. They didn’t know it yet, but it was the prototype for what would become the world’s first commercially available snowboard. Sherman’s wife, noting that it enabled one to surf on snow, dubbed it a ‘Snurfer’. Some quick tinkering with tools took place, and as soon as the toy was ready, the girls were on it, having heaps of fun. If you could get up there, you could surf that wave all day long.” Then he had a novel idea: he would join his eldest daughter’s two skis together with wooden crossbars to create something on which they could slide sideways and standing up. He looked at a snow-covered sand dune behind his house and said to them, “You know that hill? It’s like a permanent wave. On a cold and snowy Christmas Day, near the wave-capped shores of Lake Michigan in 1965, Sherman Poppen was trying to think of how to have outdoor fun with his two daughters, Wendy, age 10, and Laurie, 5. Read on to find out how their stories intertwined, and some of the key actions taken by these two men which helped to shape and guide snowboarding to where it is today,Ī young Sherman with several early Snurfers The other, the founder of Burton Snowboards, and the man whose unending drive and passion for snowboarding was responsible for getting us all access onto the hill. One, the pioneering inventor of the Snurfer, the first commercially produced board. In 2019 we lost two of snowboarding’s founding fathers: Sherman Poppen and Jake Burton Carpenter. IN MEMORIAM: Sherman Poppen and Jake Burton Carpenter ![]()
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