The Surfing Heritage Foundation is undertaking an effort to collect the oral histories of wave riders from California and elsewhere. If you owned a surfboard 20, 40 or even 60 years ago, and used it often, they would really like to hear from you.
From the LA Times:
Maybe you surfed a stretch of coastline when the waves were taller than they are today — because a certain harbor and breakwater didn’t exist back then.
Maybe you surfed in a time and place where few others did. Like Dick Huffman, now 98, who would go out to the beaches of Corona del Mar in the 1920s with a bathing suit, some lumber and an ax, and make his own board before heading into the water.
Or maybe you knew someone like Gordon “Mike” Howes, who in the 1930s was among the first to ride the waves in New Jersey — using his mother’s ironing board. “It was just about the length and size and shape to ride the waves with,” Howes said.
Howes spoke those words last year, not long before he died. His story was saved thanks to the Surfing Heritage Foundation, which is undertaking a big effort to collect the oral histories of surfers from California and elsewhere.
“We’re running out of the old-timers,” said Craig Lockwood, a veteran surfing writer and Laguna Beach native who is a bit of an old-timer himself. He’s 72 and stopped surfing only last year. “The World War II generation is in their late 80s and 90s now,” he told me. “They were the pioneers. They made surfing happen.”
Read the rest of the article at the LA Times by clicking here, and please forward it on to all of your OG surfing buddies!
