Patti McGee, first women’s pro skateboarder, dies at 79
At age 19, she became an ambassador for the fledgling sport, performing demonstrations around the country and doing a handstand for the cover of Life magazine.


Patti McGee, the first women's national skateboarding champion, doing her signature handstand trick in 1965. She posed that year for the cover of Life magazine. (Diamond Images/Getty Images)

By Harrison Smith
October 21, 2024 at 9:01 p.m. EDT

When Patti McGee started skateboarding in the early 1960s, it was just a way to pass the time between surf sessions. A California teenager who loved riding big waves and racing down hills — she just “had to have some action,” she said — Ms. McGee had started surfing in the eighth grade, taking an old balsa wood board out to Windansea Beach near her home in San Diego.

She was often one of the only girls in the lineup. And when she started skateboarding, or “sidewalk surfing,” she was one of only a few girls to join the boys in her neighborhood, flying down a hill on Loring Street atop a makeshift board her brother crafted in shop class, using wheels he had swiped off her roller skates.

Ms. McGee, who died Oct. 16 at 79, went on to become the first women’s professional skateboarder and a public ambassador for a sport that generated backlash from parents and elected officials concerned about safety. ... As she explained to the New York Daily News in 1965, “It’s like riding a surfboard on the sidewalk instead of the ocean. Or skiing down a slope without snow. It’s excitement. It’s kicks. It’s fun.” ... In a tribute on social media, skateboarder Tony Hawk said Ms. McGee helped “pave the way for all of us when skateboarding was simply considered a ‘menace’ in the 1960’s.” ... “She ripped,” he added, “and we were lucky to have her.”

Long before skateboarding became a billion-dollar industry and was inducted into the Olympics, Ms. McGee rode without helmets, pads or shoes, bombing hills on a rudimentary clay-wheeled board that was “almost Stone Age,” she said, compared to modern boards with urethane wheels. In 1964, she rode on one of the first commercial skateboards, the Bun Buster, and at age 19 won the women’s division at the inaugural national skateboarding championships.

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Ms. McGee with her 1965 cover photo in Skateboarder Magazine. (Todd Huber/Skateboarding Hall of Fame and Museum)

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Ms. McGee, right, with her daughter, Hailey Villa, when Ms. McGee was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010. (Todd Huber/Skateboarding Hall of Fame and Museum)

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Ms. McGee in 2017. (Nicholas Iverson)

By Harrison Smith
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago.follow on X @harrisondsmith