History professor Steve Estes interviewed Renee Eisler in 2017 for an academic  paper later published in “Surfing the Sun Belt South: An Oral History." This version has been shortened and edited.

I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 27th, 1947.

My dad was an accountant. He first worked in New York City, for the Ambassador Hotel and other large hotels, and then he got a job at Cape  Canaveral, for Lockheed. Actually, he was with North American and then Convair and then Lockheed. And then my mother used to travel as a child with her parents and they were with the Flagler Hotel system and my grandfather was a chef steward, and in charge of the whole eating department for large magnificent hotels in the heyday in the booming of Florida.

Were both your parents New Yorkers before coming to Florida? 

No, my dad was a Chicago boy, before going to school in New York City at Columbia. My mother was a New Jersey girl but she spent a lot of time up and down the East Coast. They met in Palm Beach.

When did you start surfing? What are your earliest memories of surfing?

In high school. I think it was junior year. I was involved with all kinds of sports and the one I was doing most at that time was tennis; I was on the tennis team. We traveled all up and down the state, playing in tournaments, and that was fun, but in the Florida heat, it’s tough to keep up. No air conditioning. So a surfboard in the water seemed like the way to go.

I could, but my board was heavy. It had three redwood stringers. I mean, I would walk if my mother couldn't give me a ride, yes, ‘cause I was determined. 

1965, '66, '67—those were my big years being involved with surfing. I was going to school at the same time, at Daytona Beach Community College.

When did you start surfing competitively?

I guess it was senior year of high school And it was only because some of my surfing buddies said, “Why don't you go to a couple of contests?” I wasn't really interested in trophies or that sort of thing, but I thought I would meet some interesting people and see what kind of fun it was.

Is that how you ended up on the Hobie team?

Yes. I started winning some contests and got invited to be on the Hobie team. Mimi Munro was already on it, she'd been on it for maybe six months by the time I arrived. 

When you were on the Hobie team, what did that sponsorship entail? Did they give you a free board, did they give you a hat, a shirt?

Travel, I guess was the main thing—we didn't have to pay for gas when we went on the Hobie surf trips up and down the coast. And lodging, too. So you would call that something. But there was no big payout, no check or anything. The main thing for us, with the team idea, was to get out of town and get to meet other people and surf other breaks. And we were very competitive—very competitive.

And what about the 1966 World Championships, how did that happen for you?

Well, first we went up to Virginia Beach for the East Coast Surfing Championships, and I got second, behind Mimi—

[Note: Munro won, Kathy LaCroix got 2nd, Eisler got 3rd]

—and that qualified me to be in the World Championships out in San Diego.

Was that your first time going to California? 

No. A year or two earlier, my mother had driven my brother Barry and my sister Michelle and myself to California as a high school graduation present for me. Just 'cause I'd been talking about it for so long. All of us, all the local surfers in Florida, were just stoked on the magazines and the surf music and hearing stories about all the California breaks and reading about the California surfers. So it was a real treat to see all these places and surf these waves. My brother had started surfing and he got really good, too. So that was my first trip out. Second trip was San Diego for the contest.

One thing I can remember is that, of course, they always had the men’s heats  in the morning when the waves were still glassy. And the women always got the blown-out waves in the afternoon. That was typical for all contests, not just the World Championships.

Uh huh. But we met lots of friendly people, and they treated us like queens—we got the key to San Diego, in fact. They gave us a banquet. And I remember huge crowds of people on the beach, and all the TV and movie cameras. 

Some people I've talked to say that, if you're from around here, you go to California or Hawaii and the surfers there think, "Oh, people in Florida can’t surf," so then you kind of surprise them. Was that true for you?

Did you actually hear people say those kinds of things out loud? 

No. I never heard it myself. But when I visited California, I found surfers there to be more rude than we were here. They apparently didn't have any training from their parents about manners; they'd cut you off on a wave. And it wasn’t a boy-girl thing, it was anybody—they'd just cut you off. I didn’t like that part, but I did like the surf out there, it was bigger and more consistent.

When did your long trip around the world happen? Were you still in high school at that time?

No, it was after. I did that for my junior year of college. Semester at Sea; three-and-a-half months on the high seas, all the way around the world. 

Well, they were all beautiful in a different way. It was fabulous to see what this gorgeous earth is really like. We got a touch of the Mediterranean countries,  Spain and Portugal. We had intended to go through the Mediterranean, but we could not get through the Red Sea, there was still fighting over the canal, the Suez Canal, and they decided it was too risky taking a shipful of college kids through that area. 

We went around Africa, which was a fabulous opportunity. I got to use my French—which I had many years of—on the Ivory Coast, where we stopped. Dakar, Senegal, and then down in Cape Town I visited a girl who I had met at the World Championships, who had been representing South Africa. I called her when we got to port and we had lunch at her house. A lot of incredible memories—we surfed there in Cape Town, and it was a beautiful rocky coast with vegetation similar to what’s on the California coast; the succulents and the beautiful little blooms of flowers and all bright pink and yellow. 

You mentioned earlier that you also got to India. 

We arrived in Bombay. And we missed the Beatles by one day—they were there the day before. Then we went around India, to Thailand, and stopped in Bangkok. I didn't do any surfing on this part of the trip, it was all about shopping. We only had, I think two days in Bangkok. 

The Vietnam War was going on at this point, 1968; I assume you avoided Vietnam.

Yes, we had to avoid Vietnam. And there was an outbreak of malaria or something like that in one of the ports—Singapore, I think—so we went to Hong Kong, which was my favorite port of all. And there was surf there. 

Yes, and I took the bullet train by myself—my girlfriends wanted to stay in Tokyo and go shopping—down the peninsula. And I was greeted by a family that had a bed and breakfast and they treated me like I was some kind of goddess because they hadn’t seen any white girls traveling by themselves, I guess. It was wonderful. They had a hot tub, and it was very cold outside, it was winter, and I just loved it. 

Well, first, when I was still on the boat, we stopped in Honolulu—that was the last place we visited—before ending the trip in Los Angeles. While we were there I looked into University of Hawaii, and decided that, if I could, I'd finish school there. They had a good arts program, and that was my major. So in Los Angeles, my mother came to pick me up at the port and was ready to haul me back to Florida and I said, "I want to go to University of Hawaii—and that's where I’ve got to go. I'll pay for it." And so I did.

So you just went straight back to Hawaii?

Yes. I flew over and stayed in the YMCA until I could find proper housing, and I got a job in Waikiki selling designer women’s dresses for Alfred Shaheen, who was a well-known designer at the time. I found an apartment right up next to the University on a great street, small and very tropical. That’s when I met my fiancé, when I was walking around the block. I managed to finish school and keep working and the two of us did a lot of surfing.

Mmmmm. But he was also a musician, so he was busy every night in Waikiki and I was required to go, which I got very bored with.

So you just got sick of going to all his gigs?

Did your parents have anything to say about the fact that you were planning to get married to a Chinese-Korean guy?

No, they didn't dare. But my mother warned me that being tied to a musician, and that whole entertainment business, was a difficult life. And luckily I found out, before it was too late. 

Well, I left. But it was a few things. What happened was, my brother got killed  here in Daytona in a car wreck, along with a friend of his who was driving. So I flew in from Hawaii to help my mother get through it all. I returned to Hawaii to finish my last couple of classes, and then I joined the Peace Corps and went to Brazil. 

Rio Grande do Norte. The part of Brazil that sticks furthest out into the Atlantic.  and it's where the town of Recife is, and I got to surf there, and the waves were great. 

So you did the full two-year Peach Corps stint? 

No, I got deathly ill. I got some kind of amoeba that was very dangerous and the hospitals in the area were not good, so they sent me home.

Well, yes and no. I was still trying to get over my brother’s death. I never whined about it, but you're in shock for a number of years after something like that. I think the Peace Corps people recognized that, too, along with the illness I had. Getting sick was probably a lifesaver for me, in fact. 

Yes. And then, when I got well, I learned about some surfing friends who had gone to the Virgin Islands and they said that they needed teachers. So I ended up teaching art at an elementary school there for a year, and traveling all over the islands. It was incredible. We sailed, and dove, and surfed. It was a great experience. 

There was another trip, just after that, you took with Linda Barron, your long-time surfing friend. You two were on a mail ship? 

I finished my year in the Virgin Islands, came back to the states and got a job at a travel agency. I'd look into cheap fares during my spare time, and found a freighter trip through the British Lesser Antilles that was ridiculously inexpensive. So Linda and I did that one together. 

We borrowed boards. There were surfers at some of the hotels, and we managed to surf quite a bit.

Changing topics, do you think surfing had an effect on how you view the environment, and how you view other people?

A huge impact, yes. Especially with the environment. 

I've seen and experienced things that very few people have, and I'm very grateful. Things that I'll never forget. I surfed with two dolphins, all of us on the same wave, and I could see them watching me. It was fabulous. I've had several experiences like that, that put me close to God. Just the beauty you see when you're in the ocean. I've had a giant manta ray go right under my board. The way the sky looks sometimes when you're surfing. You're just very conscious of every little thing out there, right on down to the smallest animal or bit of vegetation. 

I protested against the Vietnam War. That was just so disturbing to my generation because it was a huge human sacrifice for no good. It was worthless, we shouldn't have been involved. All our handsome boys got shipped over and killed, basically. 

Was there a relationship between the counterculture and surfing culture, do you think?

There was some mingling. And when drugs came into the picture, it was like a new sport. 

No, I was fortunate to have stayed away from most all of that.

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