Introducing Family Lore

0:03Some stories just stick. Family legends, pop culture history, the kind of tales everyone knows are true until you start pulling at the thread and realize they might not be as accurate as you think. That's where the new podcast Family Lore comes in. This podcast takes those inherited stories and digs deeper, unpacking what really happened and what may have gotten lost along the way. Coming up, we've got a preview of the Family Lore episode titled The Grandfather of Snowboarding. It's a dive into one family's claim that their father, looking to keep them busy in the backyard, started a global winter sports movement.

0:45As you listen, be sure to search for Family Lore wherever you get your podcasts. And check out the full episode. Let's go back to the late 1980s. Some can use their memory, others imagination. You're on a ski trip in the Rockies. It's a crisp, sunny day. You've got a white ski bib on with neon stripes zigzagging across the breast. And neither you nor anyone else is wearing a helmet, so your hair is flapping in the wind as you make graceful, predictable turns down the mountain. After a full day of skiing, your thighs are burning, your lips are chapped, so you reward yourself with an ice-cold Coors Original and some chicken tenders.

1:26Life is good. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you notice something. It's a 16-year-old kid wearing baggy clothes. He can't hear the Steely Dan playing on the patio of the restaurant because he's listening to earphones connected to a Walkman he has stored in his Jansport backpack. Instead of ski boots, he's wearing what look like hiking boots except bulkier. And he's holding something unfamiliar to you. It's not a pair of skis, but one solid board. You've come to find out that what you're looking at is called a snowboarder. And over the next few years, these snowboarders multiply in numbers.

2:04There are hundreds of them, thousands. You and your alpine aficionados are not happy. You feel like your civilized ski town has been invaded by some vulgar cross between Jeff Spicoli and Evel Knievel. Not long after you first notice these snowboarders, your ski resort bans them from the mountain. But they keep coming. And the question on your mind, and the mind of virtually every skier is, Where in God's name do these people come from? The answer may surprise you. I'm Lloyd Lockridge, and this is Family Lore.

2:43You'd probably expect this story to begin in the mountains, somewhere in the Rockies or up in Vermont, maybe even the Alps or the Andes. Well, it's none of the above. Instead, we're opening on the beaches of Muskegon, Michigan, a small town about 40 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. In Muskegon, a few blocks from Lake Michigan, in an increasingly cramped house, lived the Poppin family. My main growing up in Muskegon was on Beach Street, and we lived in a little cottage. I loved growing up there right on the beach. It was fun. This is Wendy Poppin, the oldest of the three Poppin sisters. She's talking about her childhood in Muskegon, the type of childhood that's honestly kind of hard to come by in 2026.

3:27I think the term is unstructured. It was, for me, wonderful because I was free. I just had my bike and I'd ride it around and fly over to the water and play in it. I remember in the wintertime, jumping around on the icebergs. And joining her is Julie, her little sister by 10 years. And then Julie, what's your story, Julie? Similar story. We grew up in a different time when, yeah, I mean, we really were off on our own all the time, which was so awesome. We were really writing plays and performing them in the neighbor's garage, or we'd have skateboards, or we'd tie ropes to things with wheels on them and like spin them violently around.

4:10And it's a miracle we're even here today to tell this story, to be honest. But in order to tell this story, we have to introduce Wendy and Julie's parents. Sherman, who everyone called Sherm, and his wife, Nancy. We had a pretty traditional setup, I would say. So our dad, you know, went to work. You know, he'd put on his little wingtips and his suit and have breakfast. And my mom always there made breakfast, you know, so Sundays were always big. We'd have like on the grill. Hamburgers. Burgers. Every Sunday. I sometimes put donuts on the grill with ice cream and that. I do miss that. I miss that.

4:43Wait, donuts? fire and donuts on the grill so yeah like cake donuts really good all greasy and crispy and then so that was the night like my mom she my mom did not drink very much but that was her night of having maybe one or two martinis that was always a happy night but don't let these lazy sundays of martinis and grilled donuts give you the wrong impression sunday may have been a day of rest for the Poppins. But on the other six days, rest was hard to come by. We were a very physically active family, frowned upon, napping, you know, to this day. Yeah, don't relax. So it's just constant stuff and action and being, doing things.

5:24The Poppins did everything. They swam, sailed, sledded. And we did ski. I mean, I was on skis at about three years old because my dad was a big skier and he realized that he couldn't just traipse off. He had to take me along or my mom wouldn't be happy with him. So he drug me around wherever he went. Now we're going to backtrack a little bit to the beginning of Julie's childhood. The very beginning, in fact. In December of 1965, Nancy Poppin was about to give birth to Julie, who was the youngest of the three Poppin sisters. The Poppins were home, enjoying their Christmas break, or trying to at least.

6:00The problem was, with Nancy being so close to her due date, Sherman, Wendy, and the middle sister, Lori, couldn't go on a ski trip or do anything that strayed too far from the house. So by the time Christmas Day rolled around, the Poppins were getting a little stir-crazy. On top of that, Nancy was at the stage of pregnancy where everything is uncomfortable and everybody is annoying. And while the Poppin family was growing, the Poppin house was not. It was getting a little cramped, and Nancy needed some space. So Nancy ordered Sherman to get Wendy and Lori out of the house. But where to? Well, one of the closest and most accessible places to play on a cold winter day in Muskegon were the dunes.

6:37This may sound funny to those who aren't used to it, but in Michigan, it snows on the dunes, creating patches of rolling snow-covered hills. And naturally, you can sled down these things. And that's exactly what Sherman Poppin decided to do with his daughters on that day. So he bundles us all up and we go outside and we got the sled and climbed up on the dune, but there wasn't enough snow. the runners of the sled went through the snow into the sand and made it pause. You know, it didn't work. Thus far, Sherman was struggling in his efforts to entertain the girls and keep them out of the house.

7:11The tools at his disposal weren't working. So then he went into the shed and grabbed one of my skis, my little skis, and tried to slide down the hill on that, but my dad had giant feet. His feet were hanging off. And so then he got my other ski and then wedged two little pieces of wood at the tip and the tail to combine the two skis together so it was a bigger platform under his foot. I was furious. I loved those skis more than anything. I mean, skiing was my world at that point. And seeing him nail a nail into my skis. But he slid down the hill and then we saw that it was fun and started doing it too.

7:54Instantly, the Poppins felt like they had something unique. This wasn't a rope tied to a skateboard. This wasn't sledding on a trash can lid. This wasn't a jackass stunt. This was a novel piece of equipment and a new way to go down a snowy hill. I remember my mom opening the back door and saying, oh, that looks fun. You should name that thing a snurfer. A snurfer. Surfing on the snow. Nancy Poppin coined the term, and Sherman thought it had a nice ring to it. And maybe this little diversion for the kids was more than that. Had the Poppins just invented something? If so, Sherman immediately saw room for improvement.

8:33And as time went on, he got a water ski because those are wider. So then it kind of morphed into him just trying to evolve this thing. And just weeks after he and Wendy went down the hill on the Snurfer, Sherman filed for a patent. The Poppins were excited about their invention. They wanted to share it with others. But Sherm couldn't make all these Snurfers himself, so he partnered with a local manufacturing group, the Muskegon-based Brunswick Company, which specialized in bowling products. But first, he would have to convince them that the product was worth making. And Sherm decided that his secret weapon was not the Snurfer.

9:11It was Wendy. We're on this hill, and there's three guys in suits and my dad and me, and he had me just Snurf down the hill and then pull it up, Snurf down the hill and pull it up, and he kept going like this, like, keep going, keep going. And so he's talking business with these guys, and I'm going up and down, looking all happy, and like, wow, this is a miracle, it's so fun. With Sherman's pitch and Wendy's demo, the Brunswick Bowling Company bought it. With Sherman's patent, they began producing and distributing Snurfers. And at first, the Snurfer was a popular toy around Michigan. But before long, people all over the country were buying them.

9:53And I remember my dad, people pushing him to go further with it. And he said, I want this to be a toy for kids that you can just pull somewhere and you could go to the golf course and do it. You don't have to buy a Lyft ticket. You don't have to be rich. It was a toy that anyone could have, almost like a boogie board. And once Nerfers became fairly common, kids did what kids do when they have something to ride on. They race. Starting in 1968, hundreds of folks would trudge up to the top of Blockhouse Hill in Muskegon and race down in different age groups. These snurfing contests were insane. I mean, you'd start at the top of this super steep hill, there's trees on either side, and it was just straight.

10:36Whoever could still stand up at the end was the winner. So it was just balls to the wall, straight down. And I always won because I was good at it. Well, she always won until she didn't. At one fateful Snurfer competition, she got beat by this kid from Vermont named Jake. Jake's Snurfer skills were impressive, but his vision for what the Snurfer could become was revolutionary. To listen to the full episode of The Grandfather of Snowboarding, search for Family Lore wherever you get your podcasts.