Gary Lynch interviewed California surfing pioneer Mary Ann Hawkins in 1989. Hawkins was 70 years old.


I was born in Pasadena, California, on March 7, 1919. I lived there until I was 15, and then because of my love for ocean swimming— ocean races more than pool races—my mother bought a little house down in Costa Mesa, near Newport Beach, so I could build up my endurance. That was in 1934. Somehow we found Corona Del Mar right off the bat. Although I'd already been in a few ocean swims I'd never seen anyone surfing until we went down to Corona Del Mar one sunny day. Gene "Tarzan" Smith and Lorrin Harrison were both out surfing; they became very good friends of mine. There was also Nat and Dave Theile, Gardener Lippencot, Nellie Blye Prignell, Barney Wilkes, Frenchy Peterson, Johnny McMahn, and a man named Bill Hollingsworth. And later on, Lorrin brought Joe Kukea over from Hawaii, and he was the first Hawaiian I ever got to know very well. Well, Joe met Ethel Harrison, Lorrin's sister, they fell in love and got married, and moved back to the Islands.

My mother's idea to move from Pasadena to Costa Mesa in order to help my swimming career actually backfired, because right away I started learning to bodysurf and then started going tandem as I met the surfing boys. And I fell so much in love with surfing and bodysurfing that I really never did my best in swimming from that time on.


Tarzan Smith was the lifeguard at Corona Del Mar, and when I was down there bodysurfing, of course he got to know me, and started taking me tandem. From there on I rode tandem constantly. I wasn't yet riding along, though, because I didn't own a board, and I wasn't the type to ask to borrow one. It just didn't even dawn on me to. But there was one girl who did surf, and that was Whitey Harrison's sister, Ethel. She surfed quite a bit. As far as I remember we were the only two females out there in the ocean, on boards.

The most exhilarating wave I ever rode had was with Gene Smith. And to this day I'm sorry it was so early in the morning, that there was no one there to see it or record it, or anything like that. There were a few people on the beach, but nobody we knew. My mother had taken me down there early and dropped me off, so I could surf, and be on the beach all day. But Gene and I were far out past the jetty, riding tandem, when this wave came along, and we rode tandem out past the end of the jetty. And as far as I know, we're the only two who ever did that. I know that wave had to be 30 feet high, because I've been on 30 foot high platforms, diving platforms, and knew what 30 feet looked like.

I would not have fallen off that board for the world. I was sticking out there in front of Gene, and looking straight down; it was like looking straight down off a diving platform. And we rode, he made me get up, we rode across that jetty, and he pulled out, we had no problem. And that was that. But you only have my word for it, unless Gene's around somewhere to tell you.


I was a strong swimmer, and the year before, when I was 14, I'd won the junior nationals in the 880-yard freestyle. Being the swimmer I was probably saved my life one day there at Corona Del Mar. Lorrin and I were riding tandem quite far out, and the waves at that day were breaking clear across the channel. As I recall, we were the only two out there. Suddenly we saw this gigantic wave coming up far beyond the bell buoy, and Loren told me to get off the board, and get far from him, and away from the board. Then he told me to dive as deep as I could. I did, but that wave was so huge that it caught me, and turned me around and around, seemingly forever, and when it passed, and everything was quiet, it was pitch dark. I didn't know which way was up, so I just started drifting, and eventually the water lightened, and I thought I was near the surface—but I wasn't. I'd only drifted up to where it became light. I was almost completely out of air. I don't know how much further I had to go until I actually reached the surface, but when I did pop up Loren was sitting there on his board looking all over, and he thanked God and said, "I thought we'd lost you!"


I knew Tom Blake, I'll tell you a secret about him. A swimmer from New York, a national champion, was my house guest one time. And she and Tom fell very much in love, and somewhere along the line, after she went back to New York, she wrote to me and said that Tom asked her to marry him. In the letter, she asked if I thought that she should. Well, I'm very slow about writing letters, and by the time I got around to answering, and telling her Yes, by all means, I thought she should marry Tom—she was married to someone else. I never told Tom.


Another interesting thing that happened to me in those days at Corona Del Mar, was my being with the first group that ever surfed San Onofre. A couple of the surfers—Whitey Harrison and Barney Wilkes, and maybe some other fellows—had come back from Mexico, and on the way back they'd spotted waves at San Onofre. They thought it looked like a great spot to surf. So they came on down to Corona Del Mar, gathered up a second carload, including me, and the two carloads of us drove back to where they'd seen this fabulous surf, and there was no road that we knew of to get down to the beach—or else you had to pay to get, and we didn't have any money. That might have been the reason. Anyway, I think that it was mainly fishermen who knew about San Onofre, and they would pay to get in, and would camp on the beach. But we just parked off the road and walked over fields, then went down the side of the cliff there. That was the beginning of San Onofre's surfing.


We moved from Costa Mesa to Santa Monica when I was 16, and that was when I began surfing on my own. I wasn't very good, and I was always the only girl out there. I remember one day at State Beach in Santa Monica, this young kid, he was probably 14, felt I'd gotten in his way, and started swearing, and said that girls didn't belong in the surf. That really put a damper on me, as far as my own surfing went, because from then on I always tried to stay out of the way of the boys from then on. I just didn't get in there and fight. I tried to stay out of the way. If I had it to do over again it would be a little bit different.

In fact, the best wave I ever got in my life, was when this not-very-good surfer came out at Malibu and started griping because a female was in the water. People have asked me, What was the biggest wave I've ever ridden on my own? Well, this was it. I got really a big wave that day at Malibu. It was probably the best wave of my life, I rode it from outside all the over to right next to the pier. All because I wanted to show that guy!


My favorite break in all this world is Canoe Surf in Waikiki. In 1939, when I was over there, Duke Kahanamoku helped me every day. He'd coach me. I surfed with him daily. You know, Duke was always my hero, from the time I was about eight years old. Before I knew anything about surfing, he was my hero because of swimming.


The boards that I rode on on my own were always made of balsa, and were about ten feet long. My favorite board ever was made by Joe Quigg. I absolutely loved it; that board seemed to pick up waves all on its own. This was later, in Malibu, and unfortunately that board was stolen. Then later I had Dale Velzy make me a board, but it was an experiment that didn't go so well. Dale made me hot curl board, and I guess it was the very first hot curl he ever made, and I could hardly even lie down or sit down or anything else on it. It was so narrow and short. That one, too, was stolen.


As far as my winning a surfing contest, I never did. In fact, I never even entered one. There weren't any for women. Later, in Hawaii, they started having surfing contests, and I know Ethel Kukea won over there. I did win some paddleboard contests, but as far as I remember, there were only three that I entered. One at Venice, one at Long Beach, and one at Makaha. At Long Beach, it was called the National Surfing and Paddleboard Championships, and I won the women's quarter-mile paddle race through the surf. Makaha was the last one I entered, in 1955. I was quite certain that I'd be able to win because I'd never had any trouble against girls in the water, when it came to paddling or surfing. So I took my little Velzy board to Makaha, with my two children. Entered the race, and started out really strong. But as I told you, that board was so narrow and short! So pretty soon everybody just went right past me, because my whole body was dragging through the water! I didn't have sense enough to borrow a board, and I'd been away from any type of competition or surfing for many years. I didn't realize how good the girls were getting. Later I went to see a Bud Browne motion picture, and they showed that Makaha race, and there I was at the end dragging my Velzy board up the beach. It was most embarrassing.


I'm quite sure the first time he ever played his movies for an audience was in my home out in the valley, and probably the second time was at my home in Malibu during a party. And you know, he got such a tremendous reception that I think it encouraged him to go ahead and show his movies at high schools. As far as I'm concerned, Buddy Brown is really the one that put surfing on the map and brought it to what it is today, through his motion pictures.


I was only hurt from surfing once. It was one of the last days out there. This was in Waikiki, in 1956 or '57, and I was on a tiny one-foot wave coming at Canoe Surf. Next to me, a tourist lost his balance, and grabbed me, and hung on. I tried to hold my balance, but his board was tipping, and the weight of his body dragging on me finally made me slip off in such a way that I was cracked across the ribs by my own board. I wasn't in bad enough shape to go to the doctor or anything, but I really decided that Waikiki was not the place to surf, with those kind of people out there. By that time I was busy with my swimming school in Waikiki, and I just lost touch with surfing.

Rusty, my only son, died in 1983, while at sea in Alaska, and I did surf in front of our home in Mokulia shortly after. I had an idea that if I got out in the water again maybe I'd be closer to him, closer to God, because he hadn't yet been found. So I went out there. It was a beautiful day in April, but it was so lonely because quite often Rusty and I had boogie-boarded together out there. It was just too lonely without him. I haven't been surfing since.

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