World's first patented snowboard born in suburbs

He never got to attempt a Double McTwist 1260 to finish a halfpipe, but Don Burgeson of Glen Ellyn used to get stoked riding his snowboard long before Gold Medal snowboarding icon Shaun White was born. The word snowboard didn't even exist when Burgeson first hopped on his.

"We used to call it a bunker," Burgeson says, toting the 12-pound, oak "first snowboard" invented by his father and two other relatives more than 70 years ago. "I don't know if that's Swedish for snowboard or not."

Just 18 when he immigrated from Sweden in 1926 as the youngest of 11 kids, Gunnar Burgeson, his brother Harvey and their relative Vern Wicklund invented a "new and improved type of sled" that allowed the rider to stand up by wedging a boot under a leather strap. The Oak Park trio were awarded a patent in 1939.

With the economy in the dumps and war looming, no one wanted to invest in their newfangled snowboard. Gunnar worked with his uncle's Albin Carlson & Co. construction company, raised his family in Oak Park and stuck his snowboard invention in the closet.

"We just had it and used it," remembers Don Burgeson, who turns 67 on Wednesday and is retired from the family construction business he sold in 2004. "We just thought, 'Here's this thing we had.'"

In pursuit of bigger hills to tackle, "we'd look at a farmer's field and hop the fence," he says, sounding just as rebellious as today's snowboarders.

A rope attached to the front of that original snowboard helped the rider keep his balance, and made it easier to tote the board back up hill.

"Pull up on the rope and that was your brake," Burgeson adds. Riders also carried a stick in their other hand to help them balance.

When Burgeson and his wife, Norma, raised their daughters Stephanie and Jeni, the family favored their big, wooden toboggan, traditional skies or more modern saucers and sleds over the old bunker.

"It's kind of dangerous for kids to do," Burgeson says. "It was kind of stuck away and not used very much."

It wasn't until the last Winter Olympics, when Sports Illustrated ran a story about snowboarding that credited his father and uncles with inventing the first snowboard that Burgeson realized the importance of what he had.

"The patent didn't make anything for anybody," says Burgeson, who is fine with that. "Money isn't everything."

Looking through old family movies, he discovered an 8 mm film of the three inventors hopping on the board to zip down the hills and between the trees of a DuPage County country club.

"It was a marketing movie, more or less," Burgeson says of the 71-year-old film, "and it is pretty cool."

The trio in the movie mostly go straight down hill, but their patent notes the board can be used for "jumping."

"I'll tell you, the sport has come a long way," says Burgeson, still gushing about gold-medalist Shaun White's gravity-defying twists and turns. "How they balance and do all this is beyond me."

A soccer player in high school and as an adult until he blew out his knee during a game at age 42, Burgeson understands athletes who push it a bit. As a grade-schooler, he fashioned a pole vault out of bamboo and cleared 7 feet during his playground jumps. He went on to pole vault in high school.

Burgeson's 10-year old grandson, Jake Pastors, now says snowboarding is his favorite sport. Granddaughters Abby Pastors, 10, and Dylan Marie Dorn, 6, might grow to like it as much.

"I've never been on a (modern) snowboard," says Burgeson. He gave up skiing after his knee surgery, and hasn't taken a ride on his old bunker since the 1960s. But his bunker mentality surfaces and his eyes gleam as he imagines what his childhood might have been like if those fiberglass, space-age boards had existed.

"Oh, of course," Burgeson says with a grin. "I'd have been on a snowboard."