Tony Hawk Biography
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Tony Hawk was born on May 12, 1968 in
San Diego, California to Nancy and Frank (d. 1995) Hawk. He has
two sisters, Lenore and Patricia and one brother Steve. [Note: His
father, upset with the way skating was being organized, helped
create and organize the California Amateur Skateboard League and
later the National Skateboard Association.]
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As a kid, Tony loved to do everything.
He would go everywhere, and do just about anything, many times to
the chagrin of his parents. He was never scared to try anything new
and was determined to any task he set his mind to. He was very
smart, and even was placed in an advanced class in elementary
school.
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In 1977, the future of skateboarding,
as we know had its roots when Tony’s brother Steve gave him his
first “skateboard,” a blue fiberglass Bahne board. Even from the
early age of nine, it was apparent that he was very good at what he
was doing.
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With the help of his father, he
practiced almost every waking of the day he was not in school (he
attended Torry Pines High School, Del Mar, California). They built
ramps to help him with his skills. His father would drive,
sometimes hundreds of miles, so that Tony could enter skating
competitions in other cities.
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In 1980, Tony became sponsored by
Dogtown Skateboards and turned professional two years later. By
1984, at age 16, he was ranked #1 amongst all skaters.
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In 1990 he married Cindy Dunbar. They
had a son, Hudson Riley Hawk in 1992. He was named after Tony’s
ancestor, Hudson Riley, the explorer that discovered the Hudson
River.
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The Early 1990’s were very lean years
for Tony and skating. The industry dried up, and the sport hit a
low in popularity. In 1992, he also divorced Cindy. He tried to
bounce back by forming his own skateboard company, Birdhouse
Projects with skateboarder Per Welinder. By the mid-1990’s he was
going to get out of the skateboarding business altogether.
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Just before he called it quits, the
popularity of skateboarding exploded out of nowhere and Tony was at
the forefront of it. He began selling skating gear at an
unprecedented rate and started to market himself to the new
generation of skaters. This included doing advertisements and
various promotions around the country. By the end of 1996, he was at
the top of the sport and married once again – this time to Erin
Lee. In 1998, he began a clothing line marketed to young skaters
called Hawk Clothing (sold to Quicksilver in 2000), then reached
god-like status amongst skating enthusiasts when Activision released
the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game for PlayStation. The first
game and all of its successors have been huge successes for playing
and for profit.
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He also wrote an autobiography,
HAWK: Occupation Skateboarder, which was a national bestseller.
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In 1999, his wife gave birth to his
second son, Spencer. His third son, Keegan was born two years
later, in 2001. [Note: He divorced Erin in 2004, but remains an
active father]
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Tony “retired” from competitive skating
in 1991. After winning 72 out of 103 competitions (a percentage no
one has even come close to, including 6 gold medals at the ESPN
X-Games) and coming in second in 19 of the remaining contests, he
goes down as the greatest skateboarder of all time. In one of his
last competitions, he successfully performed a 900 – the first
person to do so and accomplished since by a very select few.
However, he is not out of skating. He is very involved in the
industry and its promotion. Even his video games are some of the
most popular each year. But now he can balance his business life
with being a father.
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Some of his promotions included the
creation of the Boom Boom HuckJam, an annual event started in 2002,
in which the best skateboarders, BMX riders and Motocross riders
performed in a country-wide tour. Part of his time is spent working
with his self-named charity, the Tony Hawk Foundation, in which
money is given to non-profit organizations in low income areas to
build public skating parks.
Biography by Ian Ripley,
PopStarsPlus.com, Sr. Staff Writer
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