Surfing With Legends: A Pioneer Scrapbook

Reggie Chambers chronicled more than a decade of pioneer mainland surfing from 1939 to 1952. Beginning in their junior year of high school, Reggie immortalized his surfing buddies in the scrapbook he kept as they slid rollers from Malibu to Baja. In the lineup with them were pioneer mentors like Tom Blake, Doc Ball, Leroy Grannis, Gard Chapin, Joe Quigg, and Jim “Burrhead” Drever. Reggie’s closest surfing buddies, including legendary ski and surf filmmaker, Warren Miller, appear big as life within the pages of this definitive scrapbook. Influenced by pioneer surf photographers, Doc Ball, Leroy Grannis, Johnny Waters, and Warren Miller, Chambers’ own evolution as a surf photographer is evident throughout. His ability to capture the essence of early California surf culture is apparent on every page, both in the surf and on the sand.

In addition to obscure pioneer surfers, Reggie’s scrapbook includes many surfing legends, including Tom Blake; pioneer surf photographer, “Doc” Ball; Leroy “Granny” Grannis, the father of modern surf photography—friend and successor to Ball; and Buddy “Bud” Morrisey, pioneer plank shaper and among the first to place a “skeg” (fin) on a surfboard. Reggie and his contemporaries were younger than the first two generations of mainland pioneer surfers like Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison. When Harrison, led his group of Corona del Mar surfing friends on their first surfing excursion to San Onofre in 1933, Reggie was just 10-years-old. So, Reggie’s contemporaries were significantly younger than Harrison’s group that first populated San O’. They were in a sense a “sandwich generation” of surfers who before Reg’s scrapbook we knew little about. That sandwich generation of surfers was wedged between the original pioneers and the post-War generation of surfers. They were mentored by those earliest pioneers. Guys like Ted Nicholson, a frequent entry in Reggie’s scrapbook. Other early Nofre surfers appear as well, including Johnny Waters, Gard Chapin, Warren Miller, “Keoke,” Joe and Jack Quigg, and Fred Watson. By the late 1930s, San Onofre had become the epicenter of mainland surfing culture. Consider that by the early 1940s California surfers still numbered in the hundreds; it was a small world and everybody knew just about everybody.

Many relatively obscure and long forgotten pioneers are brought to life in Reggie’s scrapbook photographs. The pursuit of their trail-blazing passion for surfing is evident in every image. The details illustrated in their photos tell us much about their lifestyle. Minute details, like their eating, musical, clothing, camping, and travel habits are a treasure trove of information for cultural anthropologists to study. Evident too is the pioneer surfers’ sense of humor that was demonstrated by legendary practical jokers like “Keoke.” Reggie’s photos chronicle the playfulness of a generation that was about to be called upon to fight and die in the most horrific war in history. In a sense, those pioneer surfing years prior to and during the early years of the War were experienced by the last American generation of innocence.

Other aspects of their pioneer lifestyle are captured as well. Camping in places like San Onofre, Doheny, and Ensenada illustrate the raw beauty of California’s unspoiled coastline. Every photo instills a yearning to have been so lucky to have experienced a time that passed far too quickly. That period engenders the simple thought, “I wish I could have seen it.”

The Chambers scrapbook is placed into historical and cultural context by noted surfing historian, David F. Matuszak. His biography of Chambers and noted contemporaries, along with detailed appendices and annotated notes, offer insight and context into this landmark collection of pioneer surfing photographs. His text brings the Chambers scrapbook to life by connecting it to the greater body of surfing knowledge and offers contextual background that clarifies the significance of surfing‘s pioneers whose adventures shaped California culture.