Raising A Soul Surfer Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Ticket to ’Nam

  Trust in the LORD 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 th
e 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.

  Most Army doctors had never seen a surf knot, and so the first batch of surfers to show up for an induction physical were stamped 4-F—physically unfit for military service. Of course, most of the surfers appreciated the irony of being rejected, and certainly they weren’t letting on that this mysterious affliction that marred an otherwise fit and athletic-looking man would shrink harmlessly away after a few months off the surfboard.

  Bolstered by these assertions of a 4-F stamp, Tom waited for the date of his physical and drove the 70 miles to Philadelphia. The induction center was jammed with guys like him, all 18 to 20 years old. Tom filled out a few forms and was ushered into a room where he was given a multiple-page test that started with a basic problem such as drawing a line from the picture of a screwdriver to the object that matched it; nut, nail or screw.

  Of course, whole rows of guys intentionally answered every question wrong, thus guaranteeing themselves a position in the infantry. Tom answered the questions honestly, trusting in his 4-F knees, feet and eyesight. After the test, Tom was conducted to a locker room where everything he had on besides his undies were stripped off and stashed away. Paperwork in hand, he was told to follow the white line to the physical evaluation station. Tom looked down at his knotty knees and gnarled feet and trudged along without complaining.

  What he didn’t know was how great the military’s appetite for new troops had grown and that the acceptable physical standards were dropping rapidly. Tom passed the physical with flying colors and was told he had three months of freedom before he belonged wholly and irrevocably to the United States Armed Forces.

  Right about then, Tom paid attention to the war his nation was wrestling with. As his time on the outside dwindled, he dreaded being stuck crawling neck-deep in jungle mud as a grunt—avoiding land mines, snipers, booby traps; lying in foxholes; catching malaria. You name it—he knew he didn’t want any part of it.

  Tom’s swim coach turned out to be a commander in the Navy Reserves, and he graciously used his connections to help Tom get an enlistment into the Navy. This is an example of when “who you know” counts at a turning point in your life.

  At the end of his three months, he reported to Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, for boot camp, and boy did he get a rude awakening.

  The life of a surfer has its own sort of regimentation, its own discipline and endurance. But the military regimentation, discipline and tests of endurance are a far cry from the self-imposed life of a dedicated surfer. Being yelled at by drill sergeants; called every name in the book and all the ones not in the book; being forced to march, stand, wake, eat, dig holes, fill holes, at any time, with no seeming rhyme or reason—all were a bit of an adjustment for Tom. He still laughs about being “leader of the pack” to do punitive pushups.

  Boot camp spit him out, and soon after, Tom got his orders. Only four months after his California Dreamin’ surf trip, Tom found himself heading back to California, to North Island Naval Station in San Diego, where he was assigned to the Navy destroyer USS Hanson.

  Because he could type well, Tom ended up with the opportunity to work in and be in charge of the ship’s post office—a particularly enviable job in the days before electronic media, because a letter or package from home was the only way that family and friends could communicate with their loved ones at sea. The postmaster was appreciated by the crew, so much so that Tom was often given little gifts by happy sailors out of the care packages he delivered—homemade cookies, dried fruit and then some.

  While most of the time the ship’s postman was treated like a good fellow by most of the crew, there was one petty officer who resented the fact that Tom, a wet-behind-the-ears kid, had pulled such light duty. He took every chance to harass Tom until one day it came to a head. The two men found themselves in a “smoker”—an officially sanctioned boxing match where enlisted men could settle their grievances by pure force.

  The officer was bigger and more experienced than Tom, but Tom’s father was a true fighting Irishman who’d won many bouts in his youth, including a national championship at age 12. He passed on a few of his fatherly fighting tips to his son, and after years of surfing, Tom was in better shape. He eventually knocked the other guy down and finished the fight. But that only made things worse. Ego bruised, the officer’s grudge burned fiercer.

  Tom decided that there was a better way to fight back, and since direct action hadn’t worked, this time he’d try something non-confrontational but effective. Every time the mail came in for Tom to sort, he quietly hid anything destined for the petty officer in the ship’s safe—which only he and the captain had access to.

  Every mail call, the officer watched as everyone else got letters and packages from home while he got nothing. The officer couldn’t understand it; his wife wrote him regularly, even numbering the letters.

  Tom could see the suspicion and frustration building. The guy knew something was up, but he couldn’t prove anything. Four mail calls later, Tom handed the officer a huge packet of numbered mail wrapped in rubber bands. Tom never gloated or threatened, but from that moment on the harassment ended.

  For a while, Tom and the USS Hanson patrolled on standby along the California coast. The crew was kept busy with menial tasks of sanding, painting and scrubbing. While the Vietnam War raged on, and the nation fractured over it, it looked like they wouldn’t be deployed. When the call came down, they had only three days’ notice before getting underway for the Gulf of Tonkin and war.

  But war was still distant in Tom’s mind. He enjoyed being out on the open ocean and would often escape the sights, sounds and smells of seasick crewmen below deck by climbing the signalman’s bridge to stand in the open air and watch waves bowl over the bow of the ship during storms.

  Love of the ocean kept him up there even when it meant getting thoroughly soaked. And the deep, rolling Pacific, miles fro
m shore, fed his soul. He would look out across the expanse of never-ending blue and think of perfect waves peeling along some hidden coast.

  Tom had already figured out who the surfers were aboard the Hanson because of the surf magazines coming to them through the mail. One of them was a young body surfer named Rob, who hailed from Oahu. Rob was always talking about the brutal shore break at Makapu’u, or about how much better the waves were in Hawaii than anywhere else.

  “You should surf some real waves!” he would kid Tom, “Not those itty-bitty-kiddie waves they have in California or the East Coast.” Instead of being goaded to defend his home breaks, Tom recalled the pictures splashed across every other page in the surfing magazines, showing Hawaii as a surf Mecca, a tropical feast of nonstop perfect waves.

  You can imagine how excited Tom was in knowing that the first port of call was Pearl Harbor. At last he’d made it to Hawaii, though arriving by Navy destroyer was not the way he’d imagined. Tom couldn’t wait to get off the ship. It was only a short stop, but Tom and some of the others managed to surf Waikiki. It was Tom’s first experience with the warm Hawaiian waves.

  “And just think, if you moved to Hawaii you would never have to wear a wetsuit again!” Rob told him with a grin.

  He had no idea just how appealing this was to Tom.

  But the day drew to a close and they had to report back to the ship. In the morning, they sailed out of the peaceful fiftieth state and toward war.