An icon of the surf culture has left us.



For most surfers the basic story of Doc and the Paskowitz family has been chronicled many times in many places. Born into a Russian Jewish immigrant family in 1921 in Galveston, Texas; graduate of Stanford Medical School, falls in love with surfing, falls in love with Juliette, sires nine children; decides the medical profession is not his passion, visits his roots in Israel, introduces surfing there in 1956, returns to California; moves whole family into an oversized camper and spends the next 25 years living (and helping to invent) the surfing bohemian lifestyle as the 11 family members travel together along America’s beaches; operating the first overnight surf camps to support themselves while living the life most young surfers of the era considered a paradisiacal carefree existence surfing and beachcombing California’s best surf spots.



If this description sounds like a made-for-Hollywood screenplay, it was. A 2007 documentary film Surfwise chronicled the Paskowitz family saga which met with positive reviews and a short but successful theatrical run.

If a sparkle in the eyes and a grin on the face is the mark of a vital being, then Doc Paskowitz was the most vital man of our time.

But the story is a much deeper one and Doc was a much deeper human than the simple tale would indicate. As the film documentary illuminates (and as many of us close to the family already knew) all was not perfect in paradise. Doc struggled financially. His children, while living what most kids their age would consider seventh heaven, never got the formal education many of them wished for.Yet for all of that, no offspring loved their father more than this clan. And as amazing as it would seem in the hyper-competitive 21st Century, the eight brothers and their sister have been remarkably successful in a surprising range of careers -- musicians, gourmet chefs, surf brand moguls, teachers, artists, surf champions, philanthropists, coaches and businessmen.Before Stanford, Israel or Juliette, Doc was a San Diego City lifeguard from 1937 to 1941, a free spirit and early surf pioneer, establishing spots like San Onofre and Malibu as sacred locales that reflected the new alternative lifestyle surfers were inventing.I first met Doc in 1975. Always teaching and preaching the value of health and its connection to surfers, Doc later wrote a column for me at SURFER Magazine about health and surfing. That subject remained a theme throughout his life. While on family sojourns to the Big Island, East Coast, and Oahu, Doc did stints as a physician, college professor, and author. And although he didn’t invent the genre, it would be safe to say that the Paskowitz Surf Camp serves as a model for almost everything that would come after it in the form of surf instruction.Ardently dedicated to peace and how surfing is a method of achieving it, Doc co-founded Surfing 4 Peace, a non-profit organization in 2007. With Kelly Slater (who is of Syrian ethnicity), Doc and his family brought surfers from both sides of the middle-eastern conflict together to show the unity surfing can achieve and to support the sport in Gaza.It could be said that Doc’s philosophy was simple and he chose to lead a simple life. But in fact, his world view (whether you agreed or disagreed) was as complicated as modern life itself, and challenged the very tenets of America’s Puritan work ethic.It could also be said that his loving wife Juliette was a saint -- and that would not be far from the truth. Together they raised nine kids, every one of them in some way as distinctive and remarkable as their parents. The conundrum of a man who defied all the conventions of his time and yet succeeded on some fundamental and simultaneously mythic level will be a conversation long into the new millennium.In the end, though, it is the simply matchless personality that was the hallmark of his life. If a sparkle in the eyes and a grin on the face is the mark of a vital being, then Doc Paskowitz was the most vital man of our time -- a vivacity that was infectious and irresistible.His joy of life was so notable that no one who ever met him could forget the way he spoke to you. Doc would always speak to people like they were 1) the most important person in the immediate region, 2) his best friend, and 3) as if the passionate point he was always about to make was crucial for you to pass on to the world at large -- immediately.As Maya Angelou so beautifully said “people will forget what you said; people will forget what you did; but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Doc Paskowitz made you feel good -- grand, in fact -- inside and out. And no one who ever met him will ever forget it.