‘We had to go for it’

Chuck Linnen tells a story about how he helped save the life of a surfer at Waimea Bay during a Hawaiian Christmas vacation in 1966.

Linnen, an 11-year Southern California lifeguard, and another guard, noticed the surfer clinging to a rock, as the ocean grew more fierce and threatened to swallow him in its monstrous maw.

The two lifeguards paddled a surfboard out to the stranded surfer, who paddled it safely to shore. Now the two watermen were stranded in an angry ocean with one board between them. Linnen knew, “We had to go for it!”

Linnen was 30 the day he and his friend bodysurfed those 30-foot waves at Waimea and lived to tell about it. Now 71, he’s part of a legacy of local surfers being honored for their various contributions to the sport and lifestyle of surfing.

Today and tomorrow, the Surfing Walk of Fame and Surfing Hall of Fame ceremonies return to Huntington Beach, coinciding with the U.S. Open of Surfing. The Boys of ‘55, a surf club to which Linnen belonged, will be inducted onto the Walk of Fame’s Honor Roll. The 14th annual ceremony kicks off at 10 a.m. in front of Jack’s Surfboards.

This year’s Walk of Fame inductees include surf champion Midget Farrelly; local hero Scott Farnsworth; woman of the year Mimi Munro; surf pioneer George Greenough; and brothers Bill and Bob Meistrell for their contribution to surf culture.

The Surfer’s Hall of Fame will induct its new honorees Friday at 10 a.m. in front of Huntington Surf and Sport. This year, Sofia Mulanovich, Martin Potter, Bruce Irons and Al Merrick will be awarded.

The Boys of ’55 are being honored because of their special legacy in Huntington’s history of surfing.

The club was originally formed in 1947 under a Hawaiian name by local surfers George Strempel and Rocky Freeman, who had just returned from the islands. It grew to include Harlo LeBard, Joe Riddick, Dean Ashbrook, Dick Metz, Frank Ciarelli, and other surfers from surrounding beach towns.

The surfing lifestyle was just beginning to seep into the mainstream. “Gidget,” the novel that spawned the movie that influenced pop culture, was a decade away.

All of the Boys of ’55 members were pioneers that helped launch the surfing industry in their own way.

Freeman was a top shaper, along with guys like Gordan Duane who founded Gordie Surfboards in Huntington Beach and who was inducted into the Walk in 1997. Strempel went into partnership with Duane, according to Linnen. Metz and others were visionaries in other ways.

Linnen, who joined the club in 1955, says watching the Boys surf was “like watching the ballet.” While most of them were on Gordie boards, Linnen was surfing a 9-foot-10-inch balsa Hobie that measured 22 inches wide, 4 ¼-inches thick and weighed about 30 pounds. The ballet began when the guys would jump off the wooden pier and paddle their huge sticks out to the lineup.

Looking back, Linnen says Dean Ashbrook was the surfer among them who could handle all wave situations. “He was probably the best athlete out of all of the them — he had the whole ball game.”

But in ‘51, while surfing the north side of Huntington Beach pier on a balsa board with redwood rails, he surfed right into the pilings. The guys on hand jumped off the pier to his rescue, says Linnen, and Ashbrook survived with little injury.

Such heroics would seem to mark all of the Boys of ’55 as dauntless, but Linnen says Frank Ciarelli was the true daredevil among them. Says Linnen, Ciarelli “would take to the coast on days when the surf was high, jump the pier and body surf 15-foot waves.”

Days like that, Linnen says “We sat on the beach asking each other, ‘Who is that guy?’”