Paul Aho (inset below), who grew up
in Ocean Ridge, wrote the book Surfing Florida.
Photos provided
By Willie Howard
Florida surfers needed someone to chronicle the origins of their relatively young sport and assemble a collection of vintage surfing photographs from the Sunshine State.
Lifelong surfer Paul Aho, an Ocean Ridge native who now serves as dean of an art school in Kentucky, has filled the void with the May publication of Surfing Florida: A Photographic History ($31.95, University Press of Florida). Aho grew up a short walk from the ocean waves on Tropical Drive, where his parents owned Henri’s Motel. He caught the surfing bug in 1965 just as the advent of light fiberglass boards was popularizing the sport.
Not long after Aho started surfing, though, officials in the oceanfront towns of Ocean Ridge and Palm Beach sought to ban wave riding at their beaches.
Now dean of the Paducah School of Art and Design in Kentucky, the author was among a group of teenagers who gathered signatures on a petition to defeat Ocean Ridge’s proposed surfing ban.
The town of Palm Beach’s 1964 surfing ban was not so easily defeated. It was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court four years after the town began enforcing it.
Area surfers sold “I Gave to Save Surfing” bumper stickers for $1 to raise money for the legal fight.
Aho’s 264-page book started as a traveling exhibit that opened in 2012 at Florida Atlantic University.
Aho said people laughed when he applied for a Florida Humanities Council grant to produce a surfing history exhibit, but he eventually won the grant.
In addition to showcasing the stars and pioneers of Florida surfing, Surfing Florida demonstrates that Florida’s wave riders held their own in the water and created their own surf culture — complete with music, films and contests — as the sport evolved on the more famous beaches of California, where the waves are generally taller.
“It’s a fallacy to think we don’t get good surf in Florida,” Aho said. “We certainly do.”
The first documented account of surfing in Florida dates back to 1909, when Daytona Beach bicycle shop owner Eugene Johnson read an article about surfing in Hawaii and decided to try his hand riding waves.
Florida wave riding became more popular in the 1930s. A photo in the book shows men standing on a beach holding gigantic surfboards — the first Florida Surfing Championships, held in 1938 at Daytona Beach.
Chapters of Surfing Florida are devoted to different regions of the state. The Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast chapter includes photos of surfers enjoying the waves created by the grounding of the 441-foot Greek freighter Amaryllis, which washed ashore at Singer Island in a 1965 hurricane and stayed there for three years.
Surfing Florida also pays tribute to Florida’s early surfing photographers and many of the state’s first shapers of fiberglass surfboards.
Pioneer board shapers included Ron Heavyside, who learned his trade as a teenager building Caribbean Surfboards at a bicycle shop in Delray Beach.
Heavyside also built surfboards in Hawaii before founding the Nomad Surf Shop on North Ocean Boulevard in 1968.
Heavyside still designs surfboards at the landmark surf shop, where he works with sons Ryan and Ronnie, both of whom are avid surfers.
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