Camp Awesome : Retreat: Paskowitz clan paddles into San Onofre to enlighten fledgling wave-jockeys at the family’s summer surf camp of love.

To meet Moses Paskowitz is like riding a rare rip current back to the cave-man era of California surfing. A svelte 250-pounder, Moses is a grinning bearhug of a man, a suntanned sumo wrestler on a slippery surfboard.

On terra firma, softly extending a hand the size of a small boat anchor, the Hawaiian-born Paskowitz could easily sell you a used surfboard, or teach you a thing or two about wave-riding etiquette--the way things used to be done off a far-less-crowded Southern California shoreline.

With his balmiest Don Ho smile bared, the 26-year-old Moses welcomes you to the place surfers call Camp Awesome. He is director, official welcome wagon and staff sergeant of the annual Paskowitz Summer Surf Camp.

For 10 weeks each summer, with their ramshackle picnic tables and sun-bleached old trailer, Moses and the rest of the 11-member Paskowitz family set up their gypsy camp on the same three oceanfront spaces at San Onofre State Beach in the farthest reach of North County.

There--just down the road from the public restroom, in the shadow of the nearby nuclear power plant--they teach the mechanics of surfing to students of all ages and nationalities, from the 40-year-old female bank executive from Santa Barbara to school-age, wanna-be surf rats from as far away as Italy, Germany, Japan and South America.

Most are attracted by word of mouth. Or by the ads in the back pages of Surfer Magazine with their breezy appeal: “The Paskowitz 7-Day Surfari. An experience that will last a lifetime.”

For a $700 weekly charge, the camp offers surfing proteges one-on-one instruction from some of the most celebrated wave-jockeys on the West Coast. And, like most summer camps, there’s the let’s-get-basic accommodations in one of several 10-man tents at a nearby campsite that--until this year--offered only cold showers.

Most importantly, only a short board’s distance away lies a postcard-pretty stretch of San Onofre State Beach offering everything from monster waves that would challenge the gnarliest professional to an inlet the Paskowitzes call “Goon Lagoon” for its softball-type waves that are perfect for a novice’s first stand on a surfboard.

But at the Paskowitz Camp there are more crucial lessons being taught besides surfing. By graduation day, when they receive their surfing diplomas, students have also been imparted with a healthy dose of the Paskowitz’s holistic lifestyle, the I’m OK-You’re OK approach to surfing, loving and living.

“We call it the aloha spirit,” says Moses. “It’s the concept of brotherhood, that there’s always going to be another wave, so there’s no use being aggressive over things like that. It’s also about loving one another--about not being afraid of telling people you love them.

“Because people here are all brothers and sisters. We say we love each other every day. That’s why I like to call this the Love Camp. Surfing is just the premise.”

Strange concepts, perhaps, for a former college football lineman. But, like his seven brothers and sister, Moses is a devoted student of the unique teachings of his father--the camp’s founder, patriarch and former director--Dr. Dorian Paskowitz. He’s the Stanford-educated Jewish doctor who in 1957 decided that the standard practice of medicine--of quietly getting rich while helping cure the illnesses of a rapidly growing middle class--could not satisfy him.

So the doctor hit the road for another kind of calling--as a devoted father, surfer and once-in-a-while medicine man. With his Mexican-born wife, Juliette, he swore off material comforts--spending the next 30 years raising his growing family in a 12-foot-long trailer, wandering the continental United States, Hawaii and the Middle East in search of impromptu medical work and the perfect white-capped wave.

For the Paskowitz children, it was an excellent adventure. None of them attended formal school, except Moses, who has a few years at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Instead, they received an education of the wide-open highway. Their classroom was the clunky old trailer jam-packed with Paskowitzes, and the water itself, surfing alongside their spirited father.

In 1975--as his children came of age to strike out on their own--Dorian started the surf camp as a way to keep his energetic boys close to home each summer, promising to buy them each a new surfboard if they agreed to help out as instructors.

Sixteen years later, the Paskowitzes continue their annual summer pilgrimage to campsites 88, 89 and 90 at San Onofre State Park, hosting their now world-renowned surf camp.

Ben Marcus, an editor at Surfer Magazine--an Orange County-based monthly that circulates worldwide--says the unique thing about the Paskowitz Surf Camp is the Paskowitzes themselves.

“It’s unique because the people are unique,” he said. “The Paskowitzes are 50% Gypsy. They love to surf. They’re not cold-hearted camp counselors stuck out there on the beach because they’ve got nothing better to do.”

Today, the camp has become an all-out family reunion--a place where the Paskowitz kids can come to teach and hang out--for a short time leaving behind their busy lives throughout Southern California.

And for one short week, students become like the Paskowitzes--riding the waves, listening to sibling quarrels and banter, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches outside their road-weary trailer, just like the real thing.

“I’m just sold on the whole trip,” said 24-year-old Bob Russo, a “repeat offender” who is back for the second year. “There’s a special way in which this family opens its arms and accepts you as one of its own. I’m a Paskowitz camper for life. As long as I have the money, I’ll keep coming back.”

For Russo and other students, the Paskowitzes just may be the coolest clan in America, a group of nice Jewish boys--and girl--who happen to run one of the hippest surf retreats this side of the Aloha State.

Indeed, these days, being a Paskowitz is like being part of a cottage industry. David, at 33 the eldest, is former lead singer of Johnny Monster and The Nightmares--a well-known Orange County rock group.

Israel, 28, is a professional surfer, a well-regarded longboarder who also manufactures his own surfboards. Adam, 25, another singing Paskowitz, lives in Los Angeles and just signed a recording contract.

Salvador, 23, is designing what he calls the world’s first surfing comic books. The first edition--displayed in surf shops--sold more than 100,000 copies. With the help of brother Abraham, he says he is negotiating to have the strip made into a syndicated television cartoon series.

Jonathan, 30, is a publicist for a surfing equipment company in Orange County. Navah, 22, is a raven-haired model and body-builder who serves each summer as camp hostess and meals coordinator. In tow is 16-year-old Joshua, who lives with Navah in San Clemente.

And then there’s Moses. Along with directing the surf camp, he also runs Paskowitz Productions and the family’s new line of surf wear and equipment--T-shirts, leashes, boards and bags--with a label that features the family’s last name with a backward “K” and upside-down “T.”

And now the Paskowitzes have come calling on Hollywood. Last month, they recorded a song written by eldest brother, David. “It’s Real” details the family’s life on the road and its philosophy of taking only what they needed to survive, eating simply, living clean and surfing whenever possible.

With the help of a producer, they hope to use the recording--and a videotape of the Paskowitzes frolicking at the beach--to generate film studio interest in either a movie or a television pilot on the Paskowitz story.

The family’s self-promoting ways, however, have rankled some in the local surfing community who claim there’s a lot of pushy salesmanship being peddled at the surf camp along with the love-thy-neighbor psychology.

“They push all this love-love stuff, and then at the same time, they’re hustling every sponsor under the sun,” said one surfer who knows the family. “They got a free van from Ford, clothes, the works. They take everything they can get. I think it’s kind of hypocritical.

“I think the Paskowitzes are embarrassed by the way they were brought up, but they’re too proud to admit it. They turn that uneasiness into the way they are, saying their lives deserve to be the subject of some Hollywood movie. I mean, who wants to have been brought up in a camper?”

Moses defends the sponsorships and the sales aspect of the camp--including the fact that part of the class involves going to local surf stores where family members help push sponsor products--saying that the camp is by no means a moneymaker on its own.

“Money makes the world go around,” he said. “We just don’t make enough from the camp to take it easy the rest of the year. The winter months are often hard. You have to make your money while you can.”

And that may just mean a movie or television project about his family’s life on the road. Because Moses Paskowitz isn’t making any excuses about the way he or any of his siblings were raised.

“I thank God for what my Dad did,” he said. “He left a career where he could have made millions of dollars. He threw it away for his love of life and his children.”

His dad spent 24 hours a day with the children, Moses recalled. He even woke them up at night to play with them.

“That’s why we’re so special. I call it the Paskowitz magic. Some of my brothers have regrets over their upbringing. But we’re all strapping human beings, strong and articulate at what we do. And that all started with what my father did.”

What Dorian Paskowitz did was fall in love with surfing. According to family folklore, its patriarch moved to San Diego from Galveston, Tex., during the 1930s to join the ranks of early wave-crazy San Diego County teens.

At 15, he lied about his age to land a lifeguard job at Mission Beach. Years later, according to the story told around the campfire at the summer surf camp, Dorian brought the first surfboard to Israel, becoming the father of modern surfing there.

That was all before a trip to Catalina Island in 1957 where he met Juliette, a 26-year-old classically trained opera singer from Mexico who was working as a Long Beach telephone operator. She liked his blue eyes. He wanted her to have his babies.

“I wanted her to act as a wolf mother would with her cubs, like an ape mother with her babies--to suckle them for three years, to be with them every minute of the day, that’s what I wanted,” Dorian said in a telephone interview from his Mexican home. They live in a camper on the beach 30 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, where he still surfs three times a day. He said he wouldn’t be rejoining the camp until at least late July because the water off Mexico now is so warm.

The doctor got such a natural high, such a feeling of power from surfing, he wanted to replicate it for his children. It was like finding religion.

So the family left Southern California in a $25 Studebaker Champion truck-camper--with Dorian taking jobs wherever he could find them--looking for bigger and better waves.

“People thought I was an abortionist or a drug dealer because I would work anywhere--in back halls, social health clinics and psychiatric hospitals,” he recalled. “They were terrible places, where the nurses were crazier than the patients, and the doctors were crazier than the nurses--places where you could walk in and get a job.”

They parked the old camper in airport parking lots, parks, beaches and shopping malls. For a while, they lived in Hawaii--where Moses and his four older brothers were born--where Dorian ran a medical clinic with a sign that advertised “Dr. Paskowitz--Clinic and Ding Repair.”

From one day to the next, the family never knew where it was headed, Juliette recalled. Once, when the kids wanted to see snow, the family moved to North Dakota. Another time, she said, Dorian was driving north on some blue highway when he suddenly pulled off to the side of the road.

“He said ‘Something’s wrong here. I can feel it.’ So he turned the camper around, headed south, turned to me and said, ‘Ah, now that feels better.’ ”

But not all the Paskowitz children were as happy with life on the road--or with the strict rules of conduct--including no drugs and no alcohol--that their father enforced.

“Living on the road is hard for some kids,” Moses recalls. “We grew up together in such close quarters in that camper. We didn’t often meet other kids. We had each other.”

At 14, Jonathan Paskowitz told his father that he had had enough--he was staying behind with friends in San Clemente.

Eldest son David solemnly recalled the highway life under Dorian’s driven example. “The rest of us, we were just helpers in his plan,” David recalled. “He led. We followed. Daddy was the dominant leader in every aspect.”

Usually, the money was in too short a supply for extravagances such as toys. David recalled an early birthday when his father took him to the beach and presented him with an unusual gift.

“He said ‘Son, I give you the sea!’ I never cried so hard in my entire life,” he said, recalling his disappointment. “I didn’t realize it was the best gift he could have given me.”

As he tells the story, David watches his mother prepare lunch for the latest crew of anxious new surf students. He stands just outside the old camper on San Onofre State Beach, under a handmade sign that reads “Welcome Children!”

It’s Friday--opening day at the Paskowitz Surf Camp. Later that night, Moses will deliver a tough-love speech about The Paskowitz Commandments of Safe Surfing--as well as a list of camp rules. No Smoking. No Drugs. No Alcohol.

The rules are necessary, the family says. Many of their students are from upper-class, dysfunctional families--dropped off for their week in camp by Jaguar-driving company presidents and government officials. They’re kids who have never before been part of a real, Paskowitz-style family.

Moses recalls recently sending two young surfers back home to Brazil for smoking pot at camp. “What they learn here is that, millionaires or not, we’re all just surfers,” he said. “But you’ve got to play by the rules.”

Not all young surfers have taken to life as a Paskowitz, Israel recalled. “This one rich kid was down at the public phone within days, begging his mother to get him out of here,” he recalled with a laugh. “He said we were nothing but a bunch of dirty Jews.”

Still, the camp has become a success--enough so that the Paskowitzes have hired on four instructors to handle the 2 dozen students who attend any of 10 weekly sessions.

In one way, Moses is exactly like his father--he can’t get enough of surfing and the beach. He says he would be happy to run the camp till he retires--while settling down in nearby San Clemente with his young wife. Like a lot of the Paskowitz kids, he now prefers the off-road life--renting comfortable homes and apartments near the beach, getting married, starting a family.

As always, though, Dorian is a different story. Juliette says she and her husband might settle down in Baja California. But she’s not sure. You’re never sure with the doctor, she sighs.

Although he loved the beach in Southern California, Dorian was finally driven away by the fast-track culture he saw springing up all around his Paskowitz Summer Surf Camp, the very trap he fears his children may now be buying into.

And he’s got a sharp eye out for any Hollywood deal or subsequent success story that might change a family he spent years molding into his image.

“When my children take on the desires of the sophisticated culture after growing up living a survival-type of life,” he said, “well, that has the makings of a tragedy.”

Surfside, as the family members introduce another set of raw surfing recruits to the wild and woolly wonders of surfing, none of these issues come to the surface. Instead, it’s I’m OK, You’re OK.

There’s Big Moses, munching on fruit, tipping his Aristotle Onassis-replica sunglasses back on his head, cajoling some sullen Florida teen-ager to see the light, open his mind and his heart to the universe.

After several unsuccessful attempts, the boy looks up and, without the slightest trace of embarrassment, says the words that officially make him a Paskowitz.

“I love you, Moses.”