Lawrence R. Herkimer (October 14, 1925 – July 1, 2015) was an American innovator in the field of cheerleading. He created the widely used Herkie cheerleading jump, which was named after him, and received a patent for the pom-pom, which has become a staple of cheerleading. Herkimer was known as the grandfather of modern cheerleading and often called Mr. Cheerleader. Herkimer had been a scholarship student and head cheerleader at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. As a cheerleader, he developed what became known as the Herkie by accident while intending to perform a split jump. The move features one arm extended straight up in the air and the other on one's hip, with one leg extended straight out, and the other bent back. At Southern Methodist, he formed a national organization for cheerleaders and created a cheerleading-oriented magazine called Megaphone. After graduating from Southern Methodist in 1948, Herkimer started his first cheerleading camp at Sam Houston State Teachers College with 52 girls and one boy with $600 borrowed from a friend of his father-in-law's. By the following year, enrollment had grown to 350 participants. Shortly thereafter, he was making more money from his summer programs than he was teaching the remainder of the year at Southern Methodist, so he gave up teaching and took up the cheerleading business full time. His camps had as many as 1,500 instructors teaching tens of thousands of students nationwide each summer, and his Cheerleader Supply Company was successfully retailing skirts and sweaters for cheerleading squads. As part of an effort to provide a visually appealing device for cheerleaders, given the advent of color television, Herkimer created the pom-pon with a hidden handle and was granted patent $3,560,313 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1971. He chose the name "Pom pon" after hearing that the word "pompom" had vulgar meanings in other languages. While cheerleading at scholastic sports events dates back to the 19th century, Herkimer boasted that he took it "from the raccoon coat and pennant to greater heights," especially after World War II, when more women began enrolling in the nation's colleges. "I feel we have a recession-proof business," he said in 1990. "If times get bad, a father would sell the boat before he would tell his daughter she can't have pompons and her cheerleading sweater." By the time he sold his various cheerleading enterprises in 1986 for an estimated $20 million, he was considered the undisputed pacesetter of the cheerleading business.