Paintball’s Founder
Bob Gurnsey
Passes Away
By John Amodea
Photo (From L to R): Tom Kaye, Debra Dion Kirchke, Bob Gurnsey, Jessica Sparks, Bob McGuire and Bud Orr
On August 24, 2015 the game of paintball and all of
its fans and players lost the game’s founder, creator, its
first business owner, true visionary and friend to many.
After a very long and difficult battle with leukemia Bob
Gurnsey passed away in Jacksonville, Florida at the
age of 72. Many of you know Bob or know of him—the
person he was and the things he accomplished in his short
72 years. And many of you may not. I wanted to take a
brief moment to talk about Bob’s journey in this game
we now call paintball.
On June 27, 1981 twelve men (and one ref) walked into
the woods in Henniker, New Hampshire and played the
first game of what we now refer to as “paintball.” Bob
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paintball magazine
Gurnsey, Hayes Noel and Charles Gaines discussed the
possibility of playing a “survival game” five years earlier
but it was Gurnsey that was the driving force behind that
first game. He wrote the rules, gathered the equipment,
the maps of the wooded fields and arranged for the 11
other players to be there.
Within six months of that first game Gurnsey, with the
financial help of Gaines and Noel, started the National
Survival Game (NSG), paintball’s first company. He
promoted the game at every turn—from television to
radio and by buying ad space in magazines. Orders for
gun packages came in faster than they could be shipped
and the game gained national recognition almost