The Dewey Weber story rests on that jutting sunburned lower lip of his. You get a quick glance at it in the clip above, just after the opening title, as Weber deplanes, lip-forward, in Honolulu. A fleshy little badge of determination. How easy to imagine Dewey wearing the exact same face while winning the big yo-yo championship as a schoolboy, or the high school conference wrestling title, or while sprinting up the beach at Malibu. What a fierce little man, wholly intent on bending the world to his will. Which he did, for a while. Our own bleach-blond Napoleon.

We never met, but Weber and I both grew up in South Bay and attended Mira Costa High School—he graduated 25 years before me. In the 1970s he still owned and operated Weber Surfboards, in Hermosa Beach. The shop hadn't fallen on hard times, exactly, but was no longer considered cool and hadn't been since Nat Young and his Weber Ski model. I had a friend, Chris, who worked at the shop, and when the rest of us made the rounds up and down Surfboard Row, we'd stop in and hang out. Dewey himself was rarely in the showroom, but occasionally he'd walk through on his way to the factory in back, or to his office, maybe stopping for a minute or two and have a quick conversation with Chris.

Weber didn't have that look anymore. The ambition was gone. Mostly he just seemed preoccupied, quiet, more or less shut down. No legend vibe about him whatsoever. Once or twice during that same period I saw Greg Noll (another Mira Costa alum), and that was a different matter entirely: it was like seeing Babe Ruth or John Wayne, the star power came off him in a low thrum. Noll didn't surf anymore but wore his past well and comfortably. He'd moved on. Retired surf legend—it suited him.

Weber, meanwhile, had stayed on the beat, nominally, as a shop owner in the town he'd grown up in, and the spirit had drained out of him. Whatever he'd earned, whatever he'd achieved, in his '50s and '60s heyday, clearly hadn't been enough. He was going through the motions. Surf shop, diner, barstool. Chris said he always knew where to find Dewey; he was completely predictable.

None of this seemed sad to us at the time. Only later, after Weber died of alcohol-related heart failure in the backroom of his shop—21 years ago today—did the whole slow-turning tragedy of his later years come into view. As teenagers, hanging out in his shop, we thought Dewey was so old. He wasn't even 40. Cashed his chips at 54.

What a strange thing it is when a person is both an inspiration and a cautionary tale.

But what an inspiration. Watch the clip. Hold those images. Marvel at the footwork, the speed, the style. Remember that Dewey Weber's good years were very good indeed.

DEWEY WEBER: LITTLE MAN IN PARADISE

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