Murray McCory, who founded the outdoor equipment company JanSport while still in college and whose signature innovation, a lightweight backpack, revol

Murray McCory, 80, Dies; JanSport Founder Created the School Backpack

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2024-11-05 03:00:07

Murray McCory, who founded the outdoor equipment company JanSport while still in college and whose signature innovation, a lightweight backpack, revolutionized school life for millions of students, died on Oct. 7 in Seattle. He was 80.

Like Starbucks coffee and Nike running shoes, JanSport backpacks grew out of the heady, creative days of the 1960s and ’70s counterculture in the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. McCory, who until the early 1980s had the surname Pletz, was a student at the University of Washington when he entered a national competition to design a new product using aluminum, an event sponsored by Alcoa, a maker of the metal.

An avid outdoorsman, he had long chafed under the stiff, one-size-fits-all wooden frames of traditional hiking backpacks. He developed a new frame using adjustable, lightweight aluminum, along with a nylon pack complete with a pocket for a water bottle. He took first place.

With seed money from his father, Mr. McCory and his girlfriend, Jan Lewis, decided to bring his creation to market. He handled the designs and metal fabrication; she planned patterns and did all the sewing. They founded JanSport, named for Ms. Lewis, in 1967 and married two years later.