Lawrence Herkimer often described himself as the “oldest, fattest cheerleader in the business”. A slightly paunchy, middle-aged Texan, he patented the design of the pompom and built a business empire around cheerleading — running training camps that churned out 150,000 cheerleaders a year and manufacturing everything a high school girl might desire from manuals to pleated skirts. He sold his company for $20 million in 1986. “I couldn’t think like a 15-year-old girl anymore,” he said.
Herkimer was in fact a former cheerleader from an age when the majority were men. He was working as a PE teacher in Dallas, Texas, when, with a $600 loan from a family friend, he set up his first cheerleading workshop in his garage in 1948. His class had