Hogeboom Tells Students 'Survivor' Was a Game of Lies
Gary Hogeboom talks to students at Peach Plains Elementary School Tuesday afternoon. Hogeboom, whose daughter, Jami, is a student at Peach Plains, was recently a contestant in "Survivor: Guatemala."
BY MATT DEYOUNG
12/21/05
Gary Hogeboom knows the game of "Survivor" is all about lying, and he carried out one of the biggest lies of this past season when he told fellow Survivors his name was Gary Hawkins.
Believe it or not, Hogeboom didn't intend to tell a lie the entire time he was on "Survivor: Guatemala," and it was only an odd twist of fate that forced him to make up a new last name. Hogeboom stressed the importance of honesty and hard work to the third- through fifth-graders at Peach Plains Elementary School Tuesday afternoon.
He didn't want anyone to recognize him as a former NFL quarterback and, therefore, view him as an immediate threat.
"Originally, I was going to go into the game as Gary Keith," Hogeboom told the kids Tuesday. "My middle name is Keith, so if I told them my name was Gary Keith, I wouldn't have been lying."
However, when his bag was handed out while the Survivors were gathered prior to the start of the show, he noticed his initials, G.H., were inscribed on his bag. That forced him to change his plan and make up the last name of Hawkins.
"I went on the show thinking I wasn't going to lie, but I had to change it to Hawkins," Hogeboom said. "The No. 1 thing in my family is no lying, no matter what. In the game of 'Survivor,' it looks like it's OK to lie, and to do some things you wouldn't do in everyday life. A lot of people get mixed up when they see things on TV and think that's how it goes in real life. That's not real life."
Hogeboom answered dozens of questions the students had written ahead of time, and even took a few live questions from the audience that packed into Peach Plains' small gymnasium.
Topics ranged from the dangers he faced from wild animals to his relationships with other players. He also talked about the food and the immense physical challenges he faced.
First, Hogeboom told the crowd that he voted for Danni to win over Stephanie.
"I voted for Danni for a couple of reasons," he said. "On the previous season of 'Survivor,' Stephanie came across as a very nice girl, a sweet girl, but in Guatemala, she had some power. She was a little tougher than she was in Palau, and she came out with stronger opinions.
"Danni, on the other hand, always had a smile on her face. She worked hard, and she cut through that six-person alliance and ended up winning the game. My last alliance was with Danni, and I was closer with her than anyone else."
Hogeboom said that, in spite of the tempers that flared while competing in the game of "Survivor," he really got along well with almost all of the other contestants.
"I got to know Judd and Jamie pretty well the nine days we stayed together," after they were voted out of the show, Hogeboom said. "I still stay in contact with them. I still talk to Amy, Danni, Jamie, Judd, Lydia, Stephanie, Bobby Jon, Brandon, Brian and Rafe. Those are the people I was closest to."
Hogeboom said he was closest to Amy, the cop from Boston.
"Amy and I were real tight, and she found out there was no Gary Hawkins in Grand Haven," he said. "If she comes over, I'll have her come to Peach Plains."
Hogeboom said there were a lot of creepy crawlies around camp, including snakes, scorpions and tarantulas.
"One night, there was a jaguar about 30 yards from us," he said. "As soon as we got to camp, the snakes cleared out. I got bit by a few scorpions, but those are just like a bee sting.
"I would get up every day at 4 in the morning and take a bath in the lake. I went to pick up my clothes, and a tarantula jumped out onto my face. I knocked it down onto my arm, then on the ground.
"Then I tried to kill it and eat it," he joked, explaining that camps were located inside a national park.
"We were not allowed to kill anything. The only thing we could do was catch fish and eat fruit and vegetation, but there was no fruit anywhere," he said.
Hogeboom said that he never directly applied to be a contestant on "Survivor." Instead, he and his three sisters applied to appear on another reality TV series, "The Amazing Race." Their application for that show was not accepted, but CBS saw his interest and contacted him about competing on "Survivor: Guatemala."
"My kids have been trying to get me to apply to 'Survivor' for years, but I said, 'No way. They'll ever take an ex-NFL quarterback.' Then CBS called me up and said, 'You didn't make "Amazing Race," but would you like to apply for Survivor?' I said absolutely."
Hogeboom's video application featured him buried in a snowbank, wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, while his daughter Jami and next-door neighbor Drew Hewitt hit him in the face with snowballs.
"Then I busted out of the snowbank, jumped onto my John Deere tractor and said, 'See you in California!' as I drove away."
Other questions and answers Hogeboom touched on included:
* How much weight did you lose? "I went into the show weighing 202 pounds, and I lost 30 pounds. Judd lost 45 pounds, and Danni lost 25 pounds. She had to spend some time in the hospital with stomach problems. Stephanie lost 2 pounds, and she was upset with me because I kept saying she was eating too much."
* Did you think Stephanie was bossy? "Yeah, I thought Stephanie was bossy. If you watch the show, you see who you don't like. Then look at yourself, how you behave in the classroom, on the playground and at home. It's easy to point fingers at other people. You have to treat people the way you want to be treated."
* If you could go to the final two with somebody, who would it be? "Definitely Stephanie, because no one wanted to vote for Stephanie. Rafe let Danni off the hook saying she didn't have to take him to the final two. 'Survivor' is a game, and just because you make a promise doesn't mean you have to do it. Off the show, if Danni made a promise, she would live up to it, so if he wouldn't have said that, she would have had a lot of pressure on her to take Rafe with her to the final two."
* What was the most difficult challenge? "The hardest challenge was the basketball game, and that's the challenge I liked the most. It was 120 degrees that day with 100 percent humidity. This is the truth ? three people almost died that day. Blake could hardly breath. They stopped the game and said they had to air-evacuate him out, but they checked his vital signs and he was OK. Stephanie is a tough, tough competitor, in phenomenal shape and tough as nails, but her lips were blue and she was shivering, freezing cold because she had heat stroke and was dehydrated. Judd was down at the end praying, saying it was time to go."
* Did you ever think of quitting? "Quitting is not one of my favorite words. It's right behind 'can't.' In my house, we don't use those words. If you say 'can't,' you drop to the floor and do five push-ups."
* What was your best strategy? "I believe that if you treat people right, work hard, have a great attitude and have a smile on your face, you can go a long way in the game of 'Survivor,' same as in real life."
* Was it hard to keep the outcome a secret? "I didn't even tell my wife what happened."
* Where did you go to the bathroom? "We had to go out and dig a little hole with a rock, and take some leaves with us. Just think of this. There are a whole lot of kids in this world who don't have toilets. So you guys, don't take things like that for granted."
* If you were in the final four, would you have eaten the chicken? "First of all, you have to respect everybody's thoughts and everybody's feelings. Saying that, I'm not a Mayan, and I don't believe in Mayan gods. I believe in God, but not their gods. I would have had respect for their ritual and respected what they did, but I would have eaten that chicken in a heartbeat. You don't eat for a day, then tell me if you wouldn't eat a burnt chicken?"
* What did you do all day? "There was a lot of down time. They would film for three straight days to make one 45-minute episode. I searched for the immunity idol, got wood for the fire, made our shelter better and played the game ? talked with everybody."
* Would you have kept the car? "I would not have thought about it for one second. I went on that show to win a million dollars, not to win a car. I guarantee you, it would have been a lot tougher for them to vote Cindy out after she had given them all $40,000 cars."
* If Rafe was in the final two, would you have voted for him? "No, I would have voted for Danni the whole way."
* How far did you have to go to find the idol? "They said it was within yelling distance of camp, and that's about a mile radius. I found it 200, 250 yards from camp."
* What was it like when Jamie and Judd had too much to drink and tried to pick up that tree? "Alcohol is the worst drug in the world, because it's legal. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's good for you. They were trying to lift a tree as long as this gymnasium. I said, 'Let's do it in the morning.' I thought it was pretty comical."
* Did Judd swear a lot? "Judd was not the only one swearing a lot, but I don't. I do not swear. There's nothing that a swear word will get you that good words won't."
Grand Haven Tribune
Groundhog Day
Total Members: 
Guests: 827
Spiders: 60
hidden: 10
Users: 51
Users Online:
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.tvgrapevine.com/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
