"The Album of John Hannon" was published in the April 1966 issue of Surfing. Hannon was 38.


I became interested in surfing as a boy at Jones Beach. We used to play a game called surfboard water polo on balsa boards about ten feet long with rope bumpers on each end. The lifeguards at the various beaches that comprise Jones Beach had a league and played several nights a week in a large pool. At about 15, I graduated to a fourteen-foot Tom Blake hollow beauty that the lifeguards used for rescue work. Riding straight off on a big day, backpedaling to the extreme read end and still seeing one of those big monsters go nose-first into the water was a real thrill. It was like pearling an aircraft carrier.

Then came the Marine Corps, California, balsa and redwood surfboards and the discovery that there were other ways to ride than straight down the face of the wave. After the war, college, teaching school, marriage and back to California, it was fiberglass and balsa and the new era.


I started building surfboards five years ago. We had just returned to Long Island after living in Long Beach, California, for three years. Before leaving, I had bought six blanks from a fellow named Don Emigh who had been blowing foam in Costa Mesa. Don was going out of business and wanted to get rid of the blanks; they were cheap. I'd never made a surfboard. As a matter of fact, I'd never even seen one made; I had no plans to get into the business. I didn’t even think I would be able to make a board worth surfing. It was just something to keep me busy and out of pool halls.

Like all good surfboard builders, I went out to my mother’s garage and got busy. An itinerant fellow with a beard came by, asked what I was doing and when told said he would like to buy the finished product. He ended up helping me on the job and bringing around several friends who also wanted boards. By the time all six blanks were used up, we were making something that looked sort of like a surfboard.

The city of Long Beach, New York, then placed an order for 20 surfboards. I had to hustle to find more blanks. After filling that first big order we had to look for a new location. We had been sanding in the driveway under the neighbor’s air conditioner. Quite a few of the neighbors were unhappy with the noise, late hours, dust, etc.,


I went surfing at Long Beach, New York, five years ago, and when I carried my board down to the beach people actually asked what it was. The few people that were surfing were at Gilgo. The following year we took a trip to Rhode Island and someone almost ran us off the road. He wanted to buy the surfboards we had on the roof of the car. Word had gotten around. The following year the West Coast boardbuilders became aware of the market in the East and dealerships started to spring up.


Meanwhile, ordinances were being implemented to ban surfing on many beaches. This, despite the lack of the type of behavior that caused similar action in California. But there is a real need for surfing beaches. Of course, some areas have to be ruled out because of the density of the beach population, and all the swimmers. Most New York beaches fall into this category. However, there are many unused beaches in Nassau county controlled by the state of New York, or various towns that should be used. Why aren’t they open? I really don’t know. We’ve been through the million-signature petition, and we've gone to all the town council meeting where surfing is testified to by its supporters to have more social value than bagging hubcaps, and how the sport fits into the national physical fitness program. But the forces of government are definitely not for surfing. They don’t seem to be particularly against it, either. It's just that they are 100% for the status quo, and surfing is not a part of it.


Four years ago I instigated the first Long Island Surfing Championships. This may have been the first contest in the East. It was sponsored by the town of Hempstead. It has since been held annually, by the town of Babylon, at Gilgo Beach. Hempstead prohibits surfing at the town beach.


I see many parallels between surfing and skiing, both as sports and social institutions. I base my evaluation of the future of surfing on what has happened in skiing. This puts surfing, at its present point of development, approximately where skiing was at the end of the Second World War. The only big exception I see is in the field of competition, where skiing is easier to judge and where we had the experience of the Europeans on which to build.


Twenty years from now, surfing will be a normal and natural part of the total beach scene. Surfing equipment will be available only through retail stores, and the garage operation will be an oldtimer's tale that the new surfers will find quaint and somewhat hard to believe. A regular schedule of contests will be established.

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