Raising A Soul Surfer (6 page)

Ocean City, New Jersey, in the summer of 1963, was the watershed for Tom. He and Monk immersed themselves in the small world of New Jersey surfing. By Labor Day, the boardwalk shut down after a summer of activity. The stores, the many eateries, the amusement parks along the boardwalk, the miniature golf parks all closed down for the winter and the Shoe-bees (a
slang term for the summer-time visitors, who brought their lunch in a shoe box) crawled back home in the end of summer traffic. By the time school opened, Tom and Monk were fairly proficient and completely hooked on surfing.

With the hint of coming winter in the air, the boys surfed after school and on weekends, knowing their time was running out before the winter snows fell. They went out as soon as dawn made the waves visible and until the setting sun had faded into darkness. Neither of the boys had a wetsuit, so when the weather started to turn, eventually it became just too cold to surf. Reluctantly, they put the surfboard into hibernation up in the garage rafters.

It must have felt like the longest winter ever before the new year thawed and the weather warmed enough to get back into the water. For his birthday, Tom’s father bought him his first surfboard. He got it at the local hardware store, and in spite of the Hawaiian name and fancy logo, it was an authentic “pop out” board—a cheap mass-manufactured surfboard. Tom didn’t care; it was his!

Tom’s dad later admitted to him that he almost regretted ever buying him that board. “That’s the moment I lost you,” he would say. The sport of surfing, not family, school or church, became the driving force in Tom’s life from that moment on.

That first summer went by in a flash of surf, surf and more surf. Both Tom and Monk quickly learned to check the buoys and scour the weather reports for swells generated by hurricanes and tropical storms moving up the Atlantic. But even without the bigger, faster waves generated by these storms, there were plenty of good fun waves to be had on the shifting sandbars along the
coast. As the warm days drew to a close, the boys knew they had to find a way to surf all year round.

We’re still talking about New Jersey here . . . in the winter. Tom tells our kids, who are spoiled by the year-round warmth of the tropics, wild stories about coming out of the ocean with icicles forming on his hair and eyebrows and having fingers so numb that he had to ask strangers to put the key in the car door lock.

Of course, our children can’t relate to what he is saying at all.

Somehow, both Tom and Monk scrounged up enough money for wetsuits. These weren’t the nice, flexible wetsuits we have in today’s surf shops; back in the early sixties, those things were crude, clunky and expensive. They were made for diving, not surfing, and were beyond uncomfortable.

Tom and Monk had to grease their armpits with Vaseline to avoid getting a chafing rash from the rigid neoprene as they paddled. Then there was the whole buttoning, yanking, tugging on of the whole contraption, including a ridiculous-looking beaver tail that was supposed to keep icy water from rushing up into the jacket. And then top off the whole affair with booties, gloves and a hood that would barely let you turn your head. They had to work hard to enjoy the winter swells.

With the stores along the boardwalk shuttered until spring, and the amusement rides closed down, the sight of two young boys waddling through the snow in those seal suits, surfboards balanced on their heads, must have been a bizarre sight to the few year-round Ocean City residents. With stiff movements because of the wetsuits, and chilled to the bone, the boys would surf in the freezing water until they could no longer endure it.

But was it ever worth it! If the beaches and waves were crowded during the summer, the surfing population of Ocean City shrank dramatically in the winter. No more than a few dozen surfers were part of the hard-core crew that surfed year
round in these adventurous conditions. By the time spring rolled around, these daring young surfers celebrated its return and their survival with a Polar Bear surf contest.

Like all young surfers, when the surf was flat, Tom spent idle hours hanging out at the local surf shop. Eventually, George, the owner, asked him if he wanted a job. Thinking of how he’d be able to afford his own custom-made surfboard to replace his beat-up old pop-out, Tom agreed. He was a fast learner, and soon George taught him the art of repairing surfboards.

With the summer crowds, it was inevitable that surfers would crash their boards into each other, into the pier or into some hardheaded tourist who swam out too far. Then there were all the guys who were a little too careless in tying their boards down on car roof racks. Step on the gas and—
whoop!
—board goes flying off. It didn’t matter if you were part of the hard-core crew or a weekend warrior, eventually you’d ding up your board.

Soon, as business picked up, repairing surfboards became the only thing Tom did for the surf shop. Because he had been well trained, Tom could speed through the work of the day and still have lots of time to surf. And because he now had a job, he was finally able to purchase his own custom surfboard. Even to this day, when traveling with Bethany in the professional surfing circuit, it’s not uncommon for Tom to turn their hotel room into a repair shop stacked with boards awaiting his attention.

When not surfing, Tom and his surf buddies spent hours poring over the surfing magazines that featured crisp blue waves towering over the iconic surfers of the day. Those waves didn’t resemble anything off the New Jersey beaches, not even on those big days when violent storms in the Arctic Circle created perfect
icy tubes to tempt surfers across the snowy sand for a quick barrel and an instant ice-cream headache.

No, the waves in those magazines were on distant shores: California, Hawaii, Mexico. Tom dreamed about paddling into waves like that. All he asked his parents for, over and over, was a surf trip across the country to California. For his graduation gift, in the summer of 1968, Tom got his wish. He was 18 years old, and it was his first time on an airplane; but that new thrill paled in comparison to the fact that he was finally going to surf in the Pacific Ocean.

Tom, my future husband, flew into California with visions of a surfing paradise, but his visions paled in comparison to the wonderful land of Southern California that greeted him.

The palm trees, the miles of coast, the endless waves, the girls . . . it was like he’d died and gone to heaven. Everywhere he turned there was a famous surf spot, and the waves themselves! They didn’t look like this back where he came from.

Tom ended up in Hermosa Beach, California, in the South Bay area of the Los Angeles basin. For a few wonderful weeks he prowled up and down the Pacific Coast Highway hitting surf spot after surf spot, from sunup to sundown. Then, tanned, satiated, yet already dreaming of his next surf trip, Tom flew back home to New Jersey.

A surprise awaited him in the mailbox, one that would change his life forever.

A draft notice.

Trust in the L
ORD
with all your heart and lean not
to your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge
him, and he will make your paths straight
.
PROVERBS 3:5-6,
NIV

When Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger
on that fateful day in Dallas, in November 1963, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Oval Office and a war. The conflict that became the Vietnam War had been building since World War II. By the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated, it was rapidly escalating.

For most Americans, the tension in Southeast Asia was a distant annoyance that took a backseat to what was happening in Cuba and the arms-and-space-race with Russia. But what seemed only to be a slow cooking “police action” began heating up under LBJ as more Americans were shipped overseas, and more were sent back in flag-draped boxes.

More than any other war or conflict since the U.S. Civil War, Vietnam divided America. The politics, the protests . . . the fabric of the nation that had been woven so tightly by the preceding generations was suddenly coming unraveled.

By 1968, the country was in turmoil over the policies that spawned the war, over the point of the war and its cost, and there was an ever-deepening mistrust in the government. It seemed like every person under 30 was busy squaring off in rowdy and, sometimes, violent confrontation against anyone seen as “The Establishment.”

It was a time of counterculture and conflicting ideology. People questioned what it meant to be a patriot; they questioned America’s purpose. I was in the sixth grade when, one day after school, I answered a knock at the door. There I saw two men in black, complete with government-issue sunglasses. The men identified themselves with their FBI badges and asked to see my father. He was home for the day after teaching American history, and the agents informed him that he was to not talk negatively to his students about America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Tom has always told me that he was oblivious to any of this. His whole world was surfing—a world far removed from politics, protests, wars and all its horrors. Perhaps he was unusual for a young man of his generation, but Tom thought, talked and dreamed of nothing but surfing.

So it was with dread that he pulled the slim, official-looking letter out of his mailbox. The words “selective service” above a notification to present himself to the United States military induction center in Philadelphia for a physical suddenly brought that wider world rushing in upon him.

Tom’s friends told him not to worry; the Army doctors would most likely reject him. Not only did he have bad eyes, flat feet and a hammertoe (which made wearing military boots and hiking for long periods of time unfeasible), but like other surfers of that era, he also had “surfer’s knots” on his knees and feet. These were large, protruding calcium deposits that developed as a result of extended kneeling on a hard surface. (Even the apostle James was
nicknamed “old camel knees” by the Early Church because he reputedly spent so much time on his knees in prayer!)

Before shortboards, surfers used to paddle on their knees, with their feet tucked up underneath them. Today’s surfers lie prone because the small size of surfboards do not facilitate knee paddling. Back then, those knots were an insider’s mark of dedication to surfing. And they were also usually a ticket out of military service.