Lael Morgan's profile on the Calhoun women—mother Marge, and daughters Candy and Robin—ran in the May 5, 1969, issue of the Los Angeles Times. This version has been slightly edited

An interview with Marge Calhoun McClelland and her two daughters can be a pretty wet affair. They are surfing champs and they take to the water like a school of happy porpoises. It’s great for pictures because that's a lot of splashing womanhood, but [it is difficult] to interview over the roar of the Pacific—and, of course, they don't want to come out.

When the girls were in their teens the family competed in surfing contests all over the map and surfed together in their spare time for fun. Now Robin, 22, is off in North Hollywood training to be a high trapeze artist and Candy, 24, is a Laguna businesswoman. They don’t get much chance to see each other, and a family reunion is cause for a salty spectacular.

The three women are as unique in the surf as a bevy of mermaids.

"Statistics show the average California surfer is male, between the ages of 12 and 18, with an interest span of about three years in the sport," Mrs. McClellend will tell you.

The South Laguna housewife never touched a surfboard until she was nearly 30. Three years later, in 1958, she copped the Women’s International Surfing Championship in Hawaii. And she is still at it. She doesn't compete locally anymore because there’s no category for her. "Men have a senior class but I'd have to go up against the girls," she explained. "I’ve been telling them if they don't make a class for me I'll enter with the older men—and what if I should win?

She admits she is extremely competitive but she surfs mainly because she loves it.

"I used to think that skiing was it. but surfing is complete freedom. You’re not restricted by heavy clothing and boots. All you need is a board, a suit and a piece of wax."

In the summer she surfs nearly every day but it doesn’t bother her housekeeping or sewing schedule. "When I've got all day to work I doodle, but if the surf's good I can be up and have the dishes done by 6 am," she notes.

Her husband, Brennan, was a surfing fan before she was and is not about to keep her slaving over a hot stove. In fact, he spends quite a lot of time at the beach, too, because he does the on-beach announcing for many surfing competitions.

Marge was raised in Santa Monica and devoted her preteen years to swimming and diving competitions. Her coach had hopes of making a champion out of her, but it was wartime and the dream got bogged down.

When her first marriage broke up 10 years ago, she moved to South Laguna with her two daughters. Both loved the beach and there was no babysitting problem. "I took Robbie to the beach when she was two weeks old," she said. "Didn’t need a carriage. Just dug a hole in the sand and she was perfectly happy there."

To support themselves, the family would buy an old "charm house" in Laguna, fix it up, and sell at a profit. "We could spend all day at the beach that way and work on the house at night," Marge recounted with a touch of nostalgia.

In 1955, she got interested in the sport and decided to learn. Her teachers are now legendary in the surfing world—Buzzy Trent, Bob Fisher and Matt Kivlin.

"I'd get wiped out by a big wave and just keep marching back. When they found I wasn’t going to disappear, they decided to help. I was so crazy about surfing I was out in all sorts of weather; rain and fog."

The two girls learned by watching mom, which is what she expected of them. It was all for fun, though, until she went to Hawaii on vacation and met Brennan McClelland, a native of Laguna she later married.

"I wasn't going to enter [the 1958 Makaha International]," she remembered. "But Brennan talked me into it."

She came home international champ, and the next year returned with her daughters to defend the title. "We never felt we were competing. Just that someone in the family had to win." Robin recalled. "Mom came in second that year and Candy got fourth."

Candy went on to win the [1963] West Coast Championships and later entered the World Surf Championships in Peru. She lived in South America for a season, then Mexico City and Australia for a couple of years. Now she's back In Laguna Beach with a jewelry design business, intent on putting down some roots.

Robin took a job as a mermaid at Disneyland and then as a recreation director in Santa Monica. She is currently training as a "flyer" on the high trapeze. She maintains she is the non-competitive one in the family but surfs every chance she gets.

Figure-wise, the threesome are ample proof that surfing is a good way to keep trim. "It's when you stop you have problems," Marge added hastily. "I love to turn people on with food, but I’m my own victim."

"When we're surfing we never seem to get hungry, it's too exciting," Robin continued. "But the rest of the time!"

Not that the women are limited to just surfing exercise. They like a variety of sports. "Mother had just recovered from breaking one foot on a skateboard when she tried sky diving and landed in a rabbit hole to break the other," Robin said shaking her head sadly. "Now she’s taken up beach volleyball.

But surfing is still No. 1. and the girls think it’s a great sport to grow up with.

However, they warn, it is not easy for a girl to learn. "If the surfers think you’re just out there to be where the boys are, they'll ignore you. But they have great respect for a girl who slicks with it," Mis. McClelland said.

Her chief concern about the sport is that the surfing spots in California are disappearing one by one. She is a member of the Western Surfing Association and an enthusiastic campaigner for the sport.

"It keeps the kids off the streets. They're too exhausted when they come to get into trouble," she reasons.

That brought her to the subject of her current goad: the title of oldest woman surfer on the beach. The oldest man surfer she knows is 87 and she sees no reason why she won't hold out that long, too. "I don't see anyone coming along to threaten my title," she concluded.

"IN OR OUT OF THE SURF, THEY'RE SOMETHING ELSE" - CALHOUN FAMILY PROFILE (LA TIMES, 1969)

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos

Contests