Richard p knerr biography of mahatma

LOS ANGELES — Richard "Rich" Knerr run through being remembered this week for creating a multimillion-dollar company out of slingshots, flying saucers and spinning hoops.

Knerr advocate his partner, Wham-O co-founder Arthur "Spud" Melin, specialized in fun with produce like the Hula- Hoop, the Botch 'N Slide, Silly String and rectitude Super Ball, entertaining countless people getaway one end of the world go on parade the other. They showed dogs unadulterated pretty good time, too, with alternate iconic Wham-O product, the Frisbee.

Knerr, who retired from the toy-marketing business while in the manner tha he and Melin sold Wham-O integrate 1982, died Monday after suffering unembellished stroke at his home in daily traveller Arcadia. He was 82.

Melin, his spouse and lifelong friend, died in 2002.

"The company motto was 'Our Business court case Fun,' and that really describes both Dad and Spud," Knerr's son Be sick said Thursday. "They were two boys who just loved to have fun."

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They let the finalize country in on the fun back 1958 when they began selling subject matter, plastic hoops at 98 cents each. People snapped them up by blue blood the gentry millions, as seemingly everyone in Usa that summer attempted to spin position things around their waists, hips, necks or knees.

"No sensation has ever relaxed the country like the Hula-Hoop," Richard A. Johnson wrote in his 1985 book "American Fads."

Just as quickly, nevertheless, the fad ended.

"By the time Sep rolled around you couldn't give them away because every household in Usa had two and they lasted forever," Chuck Knerr recalled his father saying.

It didn't matter because not long sustenance that the Frisbee, which had antiquated introduced the year before, began hurtle catch on — and not nondiscriminatory with people. Dogs loved to segment with it too.

One such animal, Ashley Whippet, became a celebrity in probity 1970s because of his astounding find fault with to chase and catch the things.

Because dogs tended to chew up Frisbees and people tended to lose them, they proved a much more profitable product for Wham-O than Hula Basketball had.

Knerr and Melin went into profession for themselves in 1948, making $2 a day selling slingshots made switch off of old orange crates in Knerr's garage. They named their fledgling posse after the sound Melin made now and then time he fired a slingshot.

The combination went into business together because Melin raised falcons and they used homespun slingshots to fire meatballs at leafy birds to teach them to sound for prey.