Tom Morey felt the wave, felt every movement the ocean made under, above and around his body.

The San Clemente resident, who grew up in Laguna Beach, had already spent plenty of time standing on top of waves, on surfboards. He was one of the hot-dogging nose riders who helped turn surfing into something to watch.

But the feeling he was getting on this new kind of board – a board he’d created – was different.

He’d cut a big piece of foam in half and sealed it with an iron and a July 7, 1971, copy of the Honolulu Advertiser, with words from the newspaper transferring to the board. He’d done this as a way to ride a bombing surf break in Hawaii when wind was too strong to stand up on a board.

He put on his fins and swam out to the break, all while lying down on his new, homemade board.

“The first thing that happens, I feel the ocean,” 79-year-old Morey said.

“You don’t get to feel the contour of the ocean until you get on a Boogie Board.”

Morey didn’t know it that day, but his invention – eventually called the Boogie Board – would allow millions of non-surfing beachgoers to experience the thrill of riding a wave.

Morey still remembers that first ride, the moment he was thrown onto the sand, his hands clutching the sides of this new kind of board.

“And I think,” he says, pausing as he holds back tears, “‘This can really be something; this thing can really be something.’”

TWEAKING HIS RIDE

If the underside of his surfboard just had a concave pocket instead of a flat belly, Morey thought, maybe it would nose ride better.

It was the early 1950s and Morey, a hot-dog surfer by day and a jazz drummer at night, brought his board into Hobie Alter’s shop. There, he asked Alter, his friend and sometime rival, to tweak the board per his specifications. Soon, boards with concave pockets were popping up all along the coast.

Then, Morey, who has a degree in mathematics, thought if the nose of his surfboard were turned down it might get into waves better. That “wing tip” design was Morey’s first major invention, and it had a big influence on board shaping, especially when shortboards hit the scene years later.

He’s also credited with inventing the removable skag, or fin.

Morey even promoted what today is touted as the first professional surf contest – the Tom Morey Invitational in Malibu. First prize was $1,500, and Mickey Munoz was the winner.

By his 30s, in the 1960s, Morey was in Hawaii, living the surfer’s dream. That’s when he came up with the idea of a board to ride on the hair-raising wave that was too big, and on a day it was too windy for a regular board.

The first version of Morey’s board broke on its first ride, a 1-foot wave. He rebuilt it; it broke again.

But he had some extra material, a 9-foot soft foam piece that he chopped in half.

Then he rode that big wave and washed up on that shore, and had the vision that he could do something with his flexible belly board.

He was 37 and had no money.

STARTING AS SNAKE

Nobody flinched on the Big Island of Hawaii when this white guy walked out into the ocean in his Speedo, carrying a funny-looking board.

It was just a few days after he created this new thing, and he was getting the hang of it.

“My first good wave, I tried to angle. I had this turning flat, I’m skidding. On the second wave, I start to band,” he said. “This thing caught and went phhhhewww. That was big stuff,” he said. “I’m going up the face of it a little bit, I’m bending the thing down. I straighten out, it bends down over the drop and instead of going stiff, I’m part of the ocean.”

One guy finally decided it was worth an investment and gave Morey $200.

Morey soon was able to raise about $1,000, and he came back to the mainland to see if he could start a business.

A San Diego surf shop allowed him to use its shaping area and gave him resources to develop the product.

At first, he called his board SNAKE – an acronym for Side, Naval, Arm, Knee and Elbow. Then he heard the same thing from more than a few people: “I don’t like snakes.”

So he prayed.

“Sure enough,” he said, “I get this idea of ‘boogie.’”

Boogie. It’s a blues tempo, and a nickname once used for dancing. It reminded the longtime jazz drummer of his music, which he still loved as much as the ocean.

“Boogie is a good feeling. When people say it, when they say that word, they loosen up; it’s nice,” Morey said. “The promise of this thing is that you get to boogie.

“Just saying ‘boogie’ is fun.”

He put an ad in a mail order catalog and priced it at $37 because he was 37 years old.

On the first day he got three orders, enough to get business rolling.

But surfers were not quick to adapt to this new way of wave riding. To them, riding the Boogie Board wasn’t cool.

Fortunately for Morey, there are lot more people who don’t surf than those who do. For many of them, it was the perfect beach toy.

When Morey thinks of his invention, he doesn’t just see a board, but a tool to test people’s emotions. He says it helps people face their fears.

Sometimes, he goes to the beach and just watches as people ride Boogie Boards.

“I have been fortunate to be part of something that was destined to happen,” he said.

“I just happened to be the guy that came knocking at the right time.”

BEYOND BOOGIE

Morey sold the company in 1977 and since has spent years on other inventions.

“I’m way over this,” he said, looking at the first Boogie Board ever made, which is sitting at an exhibit called “What Box? Thinking Outside Traditional Lines of Surfboard Design” at the Surfing Heritage & Culture Center.

On the wall are other boards created by Morey.

Some have taken off, others didn’t.

There’s an “air-lubricated” surfboard that’s dotted with holes. There’s another with two fins, one near the middle of the board and another at the end. One board has a wheel at the end instead of a fin, so it can be dragged to the beach without having to be carried.

There also are designs Morey made in the 1980s of wave pools, an idea that wasn’t embraced at the time but is now gaining momentum around the world.

For a short time, Morey changed his name to a single letter: Y.

More recently, he helped come up with designs for Catch Surf, a new San Clemente company making soft-top boards that this year was nominated as breakout brand of the year at the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association Image Awards.

Barry Haun, curator for Surfing Heritage, said the Boogie Board helped millions of people get into the ocean. The surf world, he says, is lucky to have innovators like Morey.

“He’s such an outside-the-box thinker that he tries everything,” Haun said.

“He gets an idea, and he feels compelled to create it.”

Contact the writer: lconnelly@ocregister.com