The Coastal Bend’s place in surfing history is written in the sand of Padre, San Jose and Mustang Island, and on the shoreline of Corpus Christi Bay. The stories are told in garages and surf shops and on the water, but rarely in our history books — in part because they’re still being written.
When America’s fascination with the Beach Boys grew, so did its interest in surfing. The Coastal Bend’s population had been growing steadily since the last century, but spotting a surfer in Coastal Bend waters was a rarity before the 1960s.
When Texans traveled to California and Hawaii and learned to surf, they didn’t just bring back memories of their trip. According to a 1965 interview in the Caller-Times, Cecil and Larry Laws fell in love with surfing in 1962, which led to ordering surfboards from California and starting a business to rent them to others near Bob Hall Pier. And more shops followed, as did surfboard makers, contests and clubs.
In the Coastal Bend, waves break on sandbars versus reefs or rocks. Sandbars are fundamentally different because they’re reactive to their environment, eroding and building in response to the water and manmade features. This gave humans the ability to control the waves in a way not possible in much of the world. The constant change in the Gulf’s sandy bottom means a different challenge every day for surfers in local waters.
Dawn of a Lifestyle
1950 brought big changes to Padre Island with the opening of the $1.2 million Padre Island Causeway (now called JFK Memorial Causeway), a two-lane toll road that created an easy access point for both tourists and locals. For the first time, millions of people flowed onto Padre Island from Corpus Christi and followed the paved road to Gulf Beach Park, now known as Padre Balli Park, to the Gulf.
Both surfers and anglers found great success and community at the park’s Bob Hall Pier. The two sets of pilings produced reliably high-quality waves as the pier held the sand in place, allowing it to break more uniformly. Surfing and fishing can’t coexist in the same water, though, for safety’s sake. Surfers getting caught by hooks or hit with weights thrown by fishermen was not uncommon.
The dissonance between the two groups was so challenging that the city and county stepped in to negotiate a truce. An ordinance passed to ban surfing within 250 feet of the pier was a win for the anglers … but it didn’t work. The tension continued for decades.
After Bob Hall Pier and Horace Caldwell Pier in Port Aransas were damaged by Hurricane Allen in 1980, portions of them were salvaged and used to build a surfing pier, which opened in 1984. J.P. Luby’s advocacy and a community effort gave the surfers their own space, which came to bear Luby’s name in 1986. The 800-foot-long pier was unlike others in the area, which catered to birding or fishing—the design’s goal was to develop ideal conditions for Padre Island surfers.
The park brought 50,000 people during the first four days, including Texas’s first sanctioned professional surfing contest, the Sundek Texas Classic. “The sticks” was a favorite local spot until it was dismantled by 2005 for the reopening of Packery Channel.
Strength in Numbers
Surf clubs, often sponsored by surf shops, popped up as soon as surfing caught on in the ’60s. These more casual organizations were a valuable source of camaraderie for local surfers. The Coastal Bend Surfing Association and San Blas Surfing Association, along with Santana, Santa Monica, South Wind and Kanaka Surf Clubs, each had their own personality, logo and wardrobe. They surfed together and even won trophies here and across the state and country.
James Gill had a practical reason for joining his club, Santana. “I was 14 and I couldn’t drive to the beach,” he said, so the community was important to his participation in the sport. “I knew all the people at the beach, but I didn’t know anyone in high school. I didn’t skip class, but all I wanted to do was get down to the beach,” remembered Gill.
He received his first surfboard at age 12 in 1965 thanks to his sister’s connection to Larry Laws, who was selling surfboards he brought to Corpus Christi from Fry Surfboards in Houston. This got him into the surfing scene, and surfing is still a fixture of his life in retirement.
Plenty of surfers weren’t in clubs, though, and found camaraderie elsewhere, including in surf shops that became fixtures in the area. There were Copeland’s Dive and Surf, Dockside, Island Surf and Sunwear, Benjamin’s, Wind and Wave and more. Brad Lomax’s first surfboards came from Pat McGee’s. They formed a friendship that resulted in the foundation of the collection of the Texas Surf Museum, which now resides at TAMU-CC’s archives.
Lomax grew up traveling from San Antonio to surf; he said, “The Coastal Bend is not the Pacific, but it’s a hell of a lot closer; there are a lot more waves here than you’d imagine and a really great vibe.” That vibe was one that Lomax valued even as he and his friends entered an era of professional jobs and were busy with their young families.
A friend’s joke that they should “get the Executive Surf Club together and go surfing” turned into Lomax’s Corpus Christi downtown hangout, by the same name. Gill and Lomax’s love for the sport has taken them around the world, but when asked about surfing hurricanes and tropical systems in the Coastal Bend, excitement in both men’s voices was palpable, with an “Oh, as many as we could” from Gill and “It’s like Christmas and every other holiday wrapped into one” from Lomax. The vibe is alive and well.
Building a Legacy
The early Coastal Bend surfers weren’t just in it as a hobby; they were intensely passionate about both growing the popularity of surfing and bettering the experience of all who surfed here. One of the ways they accomplished this was by bringing surfing competitions to the Coastal Bend, including inviting some of the biggest names to surf local waters.
They joined groups including the Gulf Coast Surfing Organization, the Texas Surfing Organization, the Gulf Surfing Association and the Texas Gulf Surfing Association. Sometimes, the big names in these contests were our local surfers. National championships were won by John Olvey, Tippy Kelley, Rita Crouch, Kevin Tansey, Donna Self and Julie Polansky. Coastal Bend surfers also joined national organizations and rose to leadership roles, including RoxAnne Bowen-Schlabach, who was head tabulator, and her husband, Cliff Schlabach, who served 12 years as vice president of the U.S. Surfing Federation, as well as Carolyn Adams, executive director of the National Scholastic Surfing Association.
With over 60 years of surfing history in the Coastal Bend, generations have discovered surfing in our local waters. Surf shops, surf clubs, surfboard shapers and the surfers themselves have come and gone … but their legacies live on in a Coastal Bend that’s still an active surf destination.
