Drew Kampion wrote "At Sea with Jack O'Neill," a profile for the September 1972 issue of SURFER. The quotes here were used in that article. O'Neill was 49 years old.


The business [O'Neill Wetsuits] just takes too much time. There’s too much paperwork and talking to bankers. If I had it to do over again, I think I might stay with commercial fishing.


I lived in Long Beach, body surfed at Rainbow Pier, did the required years of high school. I went to college, probably because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and because I didn’t think it’d do me any harm. Then the War started, and I went skiing. Until they called me into the Navy. They told me to report at my convenience. Two days later, I tore some knee muscles [skiing] and got a deferment. I went to Seaside, Oregon, and lifeguarded until they came for me again. I joined the Navy to be near the ocean, so they sent me to Air Corps school in Yankton, South Dakota. I remember the signs outside the bars in Yankton: No Dogs or Sailors Allowed!

SAN FRANCISCO PARKING METER SALESMAN, EARLY '50s


I made seven grand in one small town on one sale, but you could go years without a sale. Plus I’d go surfing and come back to the office and lean over the buyer’s desk and water would run out of my nose, all over his blueprints. It was kind of hard to explain. Anyway, I figured I’d make a killing, then quit. If you made a sale to a city like San Francisco, you’d be rich. But I didn’t, and the business folded.



After the parking meter thing, I got a load of balsa and started into my own business. Everybody said I’d sell boards to the five guys on the beach, then be out of business, but I think the timing was just right. Bud Browne came out with his film 

, and my business just kept on going. We’d glue up balsa, and Phil Edwards would drive up and shape the blanks. We were just screwing around up here, but Phil taught us how to shape, and we really got into it. I used to put Mike and Pat [Jack’s sons] up on the blanks before the glue was dry to put rocker in them. Phil told us this was absurd.


We had a good routine. If you run up and down the beach and get the blood circulating, then jump in the water, you can bodysurf about an hour before you begin to shiver. In those days we just wore bun-huggers, but we got out there regularly and were in good condition. Guys would bring old tires down to the beach to burn; tires made hotter fires than wood, and we weren’t very ecology-conscious then. But the Cliff House people would complain and send the fire department to put out the fires. But all in all, it was a pretty good thing we had then.


At first I was just using foam vinyl. We’d cut apart these lined diving trunks, slip the vinyl in between the layers, and sew ’em back up. That and a woman’s bathing cap made the big difference when the water got down below 50.


I had to make a living off of surfing because I couldn’t see doing anything I didn’t like. When the surf movies came along and the population of surfers grew, the [San Francisco] business was a success. Meanwhile, we used to come down to Santa Cruz a lot and surf. It was a lot different then. I was still shaping, using a Jap planer and a draw-knife, plus I was making wetsuits, beavertail jackets and vests mostly. I loved every minute of it. We moved down there in 1959. I got hold of an old real-estate office at Cowell's Beach, and that was our first retail store in Santa Cruz. It was a tiny little building, but there were some new surfers around, and it as a whole new thing, and our shop kind of became the center of it.



It’s the freest feeling, I’ve done some gliding and there’s the wind blowing, but when you’re up in a balloon and you shut off the flame, there is no noise. No wind. Because you are the wind.


I think what’s happening now in surfing is fantastic. Not only what they’re doing on waves performance-wise, but just the whole attitude. I think surfers are closer than any group I can think of. The only rivals might be snow skiers. But I mean, what’s better than going surfing? What better possible way to occupy your time? Most surfers probably won’t make much money, but that’s not where it’s at either.


Wetsuits have made it more crowded. And it kind of screws you up, to get used to the warmth, cause then you can’t take the cold like before. But they’ve opened up a lot of places to year-round surfing. They take the shock and the shiver out of the equation. I’d say that next to surfboards themselves, movies and magazines, the wetsuit is most responsible for getting people into the water, and not only making it possible for them to go out, but to stay out. If you don’t have rubber on and are shivering, you can’t accomplish much out there.

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