My brother Lennie Kirk, was a pro skater in the mid-late 90’s and then series of events led to him getting out of it. Unfortunately, he is currently locked up in California and this made it impossible for him to attend mom’s funeral (although he was able to speak at it…through my cell phone held up to the mic). Seb Carayol from Skateboarder arranged to have an interview with my brother, to sort of set the record straight as to what happened to him, after dissapearing from the skating scene years ago. I picked up the Sept issue of Skateboarder today at B&N b/c my brother wanted me to send two copies to his two kids. Seb did a wonderful article on Lennie…I was pleasently surprised and very proud of my brother for being honest and open.  He’s matured a great deal and has become less stubborn than he used to be…he was always very independent, but he maintained a tight relationship with our mom. He’s the only one I really grew up with since our 3 older sisters were much older when we were born. I was always proud of him and of course I bragged all the time while he was pro b/c I was in high school back then…coming from a small town, that’s huge! He started skating around 11 years of age and our dad built this awesome half pipe skate ramp for him. When my brother conquered that, dad built him a HUGE vert ramp in our front yard. We had our trampolean behind one side and would jump off the ramp onto the trampolean…that was tons of fun!

In the article, my brother mentions that he wouldn’t be against getting back into skating…something I didn’t know. Now that mom is gone (she was the one he always called), he calls me several times a week but it’s usually hurried conversations about stuff that I need to do for him, which is okay :O) When he was pro, he skated on the same team as Rob Dyrdek, who has blown up these days having his own show…I had this one magazine that had a page with Lennie’s name, a bunch of other skaters’ names…one of which was legendary skater Tony Hawk. I always thought that was awesome b/c Lennie looked up to Hawk when he first started and he was his role model….then to become noted enough to have your name on the same page as your role model (for doing the same kind of thing…skating), was amazing. I have to give big bro props for having a dream, going after it and succeeding big time. I think in his own right, he’s become legendary himself…

Below is the picture of the magazine’s cover and the index page that has my brother at the top. I also found some additional pages that were scanned from his past magazine publishings on my computer…I’ll also attach those below!

I love and miss you mom! XOXO