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Bertlemann, Larry

Strong and graceful Malibu surfer from the 1950s; part of a small group of young women in their teens and early 20s who rode what were called "girl boards"—thinner, lighter, easier-turning balsa boards, forerunners to the Malibu chip, which led to the development of the high-performance climb-and-drop style of surfing.

Flaxman was born (1932) in Los Angeles, raised in Santa Monica, and began surfing in 1950, at Malibu, on a custom-made Joe Quigg balsa. "Vicki was athletic and aggressive," Quigg later recalled. "In a couple of months, she learned to surf better than most men."

Flaxman's board was 9' 6" long and weighed just 24 pounds, 10 pounds lighter than most boards at the time, and it immediately became a popular loaner for the Malibu men—despite the fact that Flaxman had painted "Vicki" in big bright red letters across the deck. Aggie Bane, Claire Cassidy, Robin Grigg (sister of big-wave pioneer Rick Grigg), and Darrylin Zanuck (daughter of Hollywood mogul Darryl Zanuck) were also regularly lending out their new boards to their male friends and boyfriends. Flaxman's second board was shaped by Quigg's friend and Malibu surfing ace Matt Kivlin.

In 1951, Flaxman visited Hawaii for the first time, where she paddled competitively for the Waikiki Surf Club. She later became a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club.

Flaxman graduated with a BA in Education from UCLA and was teaching PE at Santa Monica High when, in 1955, after a six-week courtship, the 23-year-old eloped to Las Vegas to marry recently-divorced actor Jeff Richards. In 1957, Flaxman gave birth to her first daughter which more or less put an end to her time as a dedicated wave rider. "If I wanted to go surfing," Flaxman later said, "I had to get the playpen and the baby and all the baby stuff. And I had to arrange it so, when I was at the beach, somebody was watching the baby. It just got to where the hassle factor was too much."

In 1959, Flaxman married actor Van Williams, best know for starring in the short-lived but influential 

 TV series, and the two remained married until his death in 2016.

While Kathy "Gidget" Kohner is regarded as the prototypical American female surfer, Flaxman and her contemporaries, years before Kohner arrived on the scene, had already created an admirable female presence in what was about to become an oppressively sexist sport.

Williams (Flaxman), Vicki

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