Ed’s Note: Skip Yowell, a co-founder of Jansport and leading voice in the outdoor industry for decades, passed away yesterday at 69. There has been an outpouring of sadness, love and remembrance from the many who knew him. We asked his longtime friend Larry Harrison, who is currently the director of sales for adidas Outdoor, to write about Skip, how he changed the outdoors and how he loved life.
My friend Skip Yowell will be remembered by many names: Icon, Legend, Founder, Father, Adventurer, Teller of Tales, Husband, Writer, Philanthropist, Gardener and Surfer. And that’s just a few. To me he will be forever my friend.
I met Skip in the dawn of the 70’s. I had heard he and his cousin Murray were absolute animals; swinging from the rafters of restaurants, cutting a wide swath as the founders of JanSport (along with the more demure Jan) through the outdoor business. He was my competition though. I was with a small pack company Mountain People and later on Wilderness Experience. We battled one another but became friends.
Skip hired me in 1985 and I worked for him for 23 years. It was a remarkable time in which we brought backpacking/camping to a broad audience and daypacks to every student in America. Along the way Skip helped found the Outdoor Industry Association, assisted the development of Big City Mountaineers, and was on an Everest Climb with Lou Whittaker.
I was born in Illinois, Skip in Kansas and when together artifice slid away, we were just some Midwestern boys who spent so much time together that he would say, “I spend more time with him than I do my wife.” But everyone was Skip’s friend, there was always time for a conversation, or the familiar greeting, “Hey buddy, how the heck are you?”
Preaching the gospel of JanSport took us on an endless series of sales, promotions and clinics–retail the way it used to be, down in the trenches with customers. The JanSport Mt. Rainier climbs were another way Skip passed on his love of the mountains and the camaraderie of climbing. Thirty years ago I married my bride with Skip at my side on Rainier.
Catch this man late at night and you were apt to enjoy some great stories of adventures past, but you also would hear what his wife Winnie was up to, their plans for upcoming trips, or tales of the grandkids. There was always a special look in his eye when he spoke of his brilliant daughter Quinn. He was a man grounded in family with a heart open to all.
I will remain forever jealous of Skip’s green thumb. When you receive enough bottles of hot sauce, popcorn and gorgeous pictures of sunflowers, peppers and tomatoes you start to wonder does he have more hours in the day than me? Is it fertilizer, water, sun or love that makes his plants grow so well?
One the best known Skipperism’s has to be “The best is barely good enough.” Maybe it began as a JanSport meme but took on greater meaning through the years. I always viewed it as his commitment to others that was evidenced in the traditions he created, the institutions he founded, and the caring heart selflessly offered.
Skip worked tirelessly to make the outdoor industry what it is today, a thriving business that takes the time to share the lessons of wilderness with all that will listen. The marginalized, the young, the handicapped, and more have a voice because he stood up for them in Washington, labored in not-for-profit board rooms and backed them with cash from JanSport. People were Skip Yowell’s full time job, that and the knowledge that the outdoors opened a pathway to personal fulfillment for everyone.
Do not canonize my friend. His great beauty was his humanity. You can take a man out of Kansas, but you can’t take the simple beauty of Kansas out of the man. That humanity, that kindness of spirit, was his gift to each of us.
I am really going to miss you Skipper.
