Preserving the early days of surfing for all time

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Hawaiian legend Duke Kahanamoku, center, and other wave riders relax on the beach at San Onofre in the 1940s. Surfing’s roots are in Polynesia, but the lifestyle of modern surfing was born in Southern California. (Fritz Watson / Surfing Heritage)


"The Surfing Heritage Foundation is undertaking an effort to collect the oral histories of wave riders from California and elsewhere. 'We're running out of the old-timers,' says a surfing writer.
By Hector Tobar

If you owned a surfboard 20, 40 or even 60 years ago, and used it often, there's a group of people in San Clemente who would really like to hear from you.

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."

Continued at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...1751954.column