Crown City History I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H C O R O N A D O H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
Catching waves
throughout the years
B y C A R O L PA S T O R , C O R O N A D O H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N V O L U N T E E R
n any given day, while strolling the boardwalk by the Coronado Shores, one can enjoy watching the surfers in our small, beautiful part of the ocean. You might even be one of those frequent surfers. Did you ever think about how this sport came to be a part of our daily lives? Let me give you a bit of the history of surfing that is so much a part of the Coronado lifestyle. Believe it or not, surfing dates back to life in Polynesia many hundreds of years ago as a means of transportation. When surfing came to Tahiti years later, people began using the boards standing up. The boards became known as “surf boards” over time. As early as 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook wrote of his crew observing the surfers in Hawaii. By the mid-1880s, surfing came to Hawaii. In 1907, Hawaiian surfer George Freeth came to Southern California and gave demonstrations in the Los Angeles area. This was followed by visits from Duke Kahanamoku, also from Hawaii. An Olympic swimmer in 1916, Kahanamoku is considered the Father of Modern Surfing. His boards, many of which can be seen in Hawaii today, weighed as much as 100 pounds — a far cry from the boards of today. Coronado residents would leave their own mark on the surfing world by the 1950s with such surfers as Tom Carlin. He later became a Navy SEAL, and later still, established his career doing underwater film for TV and movies in the Caribbean working in the ocean once again. Margie Manock is said to be one of Coronado’s first female surfers. Local lifeguard and Coronado natives Russ and John Elwell had ventured to Honolulu to attempt surfing on the wild North Shore in 1958. Best remembered for her role as “Lenore ‘Casey’ Case” on the 1960s television series “The Green Hornet,” Wende Wagner was known as a local surfer girl. Wende was one of the first, if not the first, Coronado High School student to wear a bikini bathing suit as far as anyone can remember. She was a bathing beauty as well as a skilled swimmer and surfer. As a Coronado teenager, Wende found herself attracted to the waves and the collection of youths Russ Elwell stands in the Coronado surf who were informally known as the Coronado Gypsies, guys with with his lifeguard equipment. nicknames like “Dooley” (Tom Carlin), “Skeeter”and “Gunker” (Chuck Quinn). (Coronado Historical Association Collection)
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CROWN CITY MAGAZINE
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AUGUST 2021
