Woody "Spider" Brown (1912-2008)
Aloha! And welcome to this chapter of LEGENDARY SURFERS covering the life and aloha of legendary surfer Woody Brown!
This fifth chapter of LEGENDARY SURFERS: The 1940s, originated over a decade before his passing (in 2008), as a biography in The Surfer's Journal, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1996, pp. 94-107, with photos by Bud Browne.
Since that time, I've added the full text of what I originally wrote about Woody and combined it with other source material.
For some additional links about Woody, especially at the time of his passing, please visit also:
Woody was truly an incredible person. I will always cherish my good fortune to have spent time with him, talking and surfing. Enjoy his story and please spread the stoke that Woody embodied!
Gliding, Betty and
5. “Woody” Brown (1912-2008)
Woodbridge Parker Brown was born on January 5, 1912, into a wealthy family of Wall Street brokers, in New York City New York British Isles ],” Woody told surfwriter Ben Marcus, adding, “It’s a bunch of baloney as far as I’m concerned.”[1]
Gliding, Betty and La Jolla
In his formative years, Woody fell in love with flying and left school at age 16 to seek it out. “When I was a kid, I ran away from home; quit school. I couldn’t stand school. I wanted to fly so bad.” Woody began hanging around Curtis Airfield, on Long Island , New York
“Yeah, I met him out there at the field. I helped him with his airplane before he took off for Paris
“Soaring appealed to me because it’s like surfing or sailing. It’s working with nature; not ‘Brute Force and Bloody Ignorance.’ You know, you give something enough horse power and no matter what it is it’ll fly. Flying was brand new, then! Every time you took off it was an experiment. You didn’t know what was gonna happen. Every flight was a brand new flight. So, it was real exciting.”
“As a kid I was always worried about finding truth,” Woody told Ben Marcus. “I was unhappy. I didn’t understand why men were stealing from each other and killing each other and why the world had so many problems. The flying sort of gave me a break. I could get off the earth and way up in the clouds and sky, away from everything.”[2] As Woody put it, flying helped him “get away from the Earth... There is no crime or hatred when you fly. The truth is central to me.”[3]
The happiness Woody sought was found in his marriage to an independent-minded English woman named Elizabeth Sellon. “Betty felt the same as me,” Woody fondly recalled. “She hated cities and big-shot money deals and all that society stuff. We said, ‘Let’s get together and get out of here and go to California
Woody bought a glider for $25 and left New York with Betty Sellon and her daughter Jenny , California
“We left New York in ’35; went to La Jolla . I had a cousin out there and they got us a place to live. We stayed there in La Jolla for five years. The happiest time of my life!
“My first wife was just a wonderful person; one of those freak women who just, you know, lived for me; to take care of me. I didn’t realize it at the time. I took things for granted, you know? I was just young, dumb and stupid. But, she was such a wonderful woman; whatever I wanted to do, ‘Oh, yeah! I’d love to do that, too!’ But, now I know damn well she didn’t want to.”[6]
They drove to California La Jolla , Woody made just enough of an income to support his wife and his dedication to gliding. He was the first to launch a glider off the cliffs above La Jolla, convincing a local businessman to lease what became Torrey Flight Park
Yet, gliding was not all fun and games. “I died two or three times already, you know. I had a mid-air crack-up in my glider and I lived through that; so did the other guy. Miracle as it was, it took his wing right off and smashed my whole nose. I thought, ‘Well, we’re just going down’ and then, suddenly, ‘Hey, man, you’re still flying!’ And I cleared the rubbish away and I’m still flying! So, there was a big, steep place on the mountain ahead. I just flew right up and just glided in. I took a tremendous chance cuz my tail surfaces were gone and I knew that any minute I’d lose control, eh? But, ‘Get down quick as you can, anyway you can.’ So, I lay right down on the fucking mountain like that. That was one time.[9]
“Then, in the desert, a kid brought over a very bad ship and we wouldn’t help him put it together. We told him, ‘No, no, no! This ship is not made to fly in these violent heat waves.’ ‘Thermals,’ we called ‘em. There’s an airforce base there now.
“So, he put it together and he towed and flew a little bit and we wouldn’t have anything to do with it. My ship was strong and so was my friend’s, Johnny Robinsons. And so, we were flying there and no trouble. We got the thermals and everything. But, he’d bought this new instrument called a variometer. In those days, we didn’t have any instruments hardly, see. But, they’d just made a new one and he bought it; cost hundreds of dollars. He was a rich guy, see.
“So, he said, ‘Won’t you come up with me just onceto show me how to work this variometer?’ Cuz he was a greenhorn, see; didn’t know much about flying. So, like a damn fool, I said, ‘Alright, I’ll go up with you just once to help show you how to catch a thermal.’
“We got up there on the tow line and hit this thermal and I said, ‘OK, now! See, it’s lifting up your right wing, so you turn to the right! Now, turn to the right! Come on, turn right!’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, Woody. I cannot. The wing’s come off.’ That’s all I can remember. We came down with no wings at all and we lived through it. It broke his legs in two or three places. His arms were all broke up and I had a brain concussion; broke my windpipe. There was some tubing I went up against and hit my head and I was out for eight hours.
“The only thing that saved us was that this glider was a terrible thing. It had a huge wing and it had wires going up top – called ‘cabane.’ Wires up on top to hold her on the ground and then flying wires, underneath, when it lifted, see, instead of struts. So, it had all that stuff. So, when the wings came off, this tremendous area of these wings were going around like helicopter blades, see? They kept flying around on the end of these wires and that kind of broke our fall, so we didn’t come down quite so hard, with no wings at all. That’s the only reason why we lived through it. So, that’s the second time.
About Woody’s near-death experiences, legendary Hawaiian surfer Rabbit Kekai declared: “That guy pancaked a glider... and walked away. Just like he [later] did at Waimea Bay
Woody’s attention was drawn to surfing as soon as he arrived in La Jolla . “I started surfing right away,” Woody recalled. “I first made these solid redwood planks, you know. You’d stand in the shallow water and shove off just like a Boogie board [body board].
“But, then I began to go, ‘Gee, man, if you could just have a board that would hold you up; instead of, like, solid planks – you’d get an inch and a half plank from a lumber company and whittle it out. It wouldn’t hold you up at all, but when you got going on a wave, it was alright; couldn’t stand up, just lie down. I thought, ‘Gee, if I could float, then I could catch ‘em before they’re breaking. This way, I’m just catching white water.’ All the time, just standing in the shallow water. I thought, ‘Gee, then you could catch ‘em way out there and ride ‘em all the way in.’
“So, that’s when I made the hollow little plywood box; about 9 feet long and about 4 inches thick. It was great. I could paddle out there and catch the waves and ride.”[12] The year was 1936. Woody, using glider construction techniques, built his first surfboard out of plywood. It was hollow, 9 feet long, 4 inches thick and 22 inches wide and he had yet to hear about Tom Blake.
Don Okey, one of San Diego' s first surfers and a high school student at the time, told a newspaper reporter years later that “Woody and Towney Cromwell began surfing La Jolla in 1936 on those boards Woody built. Surfing in San Diego
Woody recalled the first La Jolla surfers. “Towney Cromwell, Don Okey – they all started cuz’a me, you know. They saw me out there and wanted to surf, too. Towney wanted to build a board like mine, so I helped him.” Woody told me about Cromwell’s death. “He got killed in an airplane accident in Mexico
“‘Hey, you wanna get fired? Either you go or you get off the job.’ So, the pilot went anyway and they flew right into the side of a mountain; killed ‘em all, including poor Towney.
“It’s like that old joke where there’s two guys about to board a flight and one guy says, ‘Aw, you know, when it’s time for you to go, it’s time for you to go and there’s nothing you can do about it. Nobody can change it.’ The other guy says, ‘Yeah, that’s OK, that’s swell, but I don’t want to be there when it’s the pilot’s time to go.’”[14]
“Woody and a guy named Bob Barber discovered North Bird Rock and Windansea and other famous spots,” remembered Don Okey. “Woody was a real mild-mannered guy, he never talked about himself or bragged, but he had a lot of guts. He was riding big waves even before he got to Hawai‘i.”[15]
“I’ve seen 20 foot waves in California Pacific Beach ; that point there where the sand beach comes up to that rock point, where La Jolla starts, you know? There’s houses there, now, but it used to be all bare. We built a shack there and you climbed down the cliffs to go out. They form out there off the rock point and then swing in. But, the point would make ‘em break way out and they’d have a nice shoulder going in. You’d pull out before you got to the regular break. I’ve seen that20-25 feet. Being a point, I’m sure it was 25 feet.
“Another big wave spot was Dana Point Dana Point , there were no waves, but I’m sure [Lorrin “Whitey”] Harrison got ‘em that size.”
“I used to like Bird Rock,” Woody recalled, “because there was a peak out there; there was a coral head. These swells would come in and pucker up and break there and then it was deep water all around. So, you could ride it in and it would quit and you’re in deep water. So, you paddle back again. That was kind of nice. If you lost your board, it didn’t matter, the board would just float around in deep water. That I like. That was good. I didn’t want to lose my board. My hollow board out of plywood, it would get smashed if it hit the reef like at Windansea.”
After his first hollow construction, Woody, “built a better one. It was still a plywood box, but not quite so thick and a little wider and 10 feet long. It had a nice vee bottom and a little, small skeg on, which was probably one of the very first in the world,” Woody told me, crediting Tom Blake with the first fin in 1935. Woody – still not knowing about Tom’s innovations of the hollow board and skeg – made his first surfboard keel, “about ‘36 or ‘37, somewhere in there; about the same time. But, I didn’t know anything about him and his experiments with adding fins to surfboards. See, we were all separated out. I was in San Diego and he was in L.A.
Thinking back on how this second “plywood boxresponded in the surf, Woody exclaimed, “It was just like these modern kids’ boards, now! I’m amazed, you know. Don Okey wrote to me from California
“I always made my boards to be the fastest board in the world, because I put my aerodynamics into the understanding of the design, eh? Same thing, the air or the water; more or less. So, I made my boards faster and faster. Finally, I even ground them down and polished them with jeweler’s rouge and everything; polished the surface. Oh, that made a big difference. Of course, now they’re all finished that way. The commercial board is all finished off nice and smooth.”
I asked Woody when he recalled the first balsa boards arriving on the scene. “Oh, I think it was about ‘40, about the time just before I left La Jolla . The boards were big Swastika boards; big wide square tails; slide ass, no skegs. Skegs were just starting.
Of the partial balsa wood boards, “I remember in La Jolla,” Woody said, “some of the boys brought ‘em down from up in L.A.
“Those five years in La Jolla were the only joy I’ve ever had in my life,” Woody told Ben Marcus.[18] “My wife got pregnant and was expected to deliver around the same time I was supposed to compete in a big glider meet in Texas
In Texas Hoover
“They all laughed at me at the [Wichita Falls , Texas Wichita , Kansas
“When he landed [back] in Texas,” wrote world champion surfer Nat Young, “he was given a hero’s welcome, inundated with telegrams, and paraded through the streets of Wichita Falls with a police escort and a brass band.”[21] Job offers for flying of all kinds also came his way. “Oh, boy, I could have had anything I wanted,” he told me. However, Woody was more concerned about his wife. “The day after I got back from Texas
Woody told me that they had originally been fearful of having children, “Because American women have the highest death rate of childbirth than any nation in the world. So, I was kinda scared and said, ‘Nah! Honey, you don’t want to take the chance.’ But, she said, ‘Look, I had one before.’ She was married before; had a cute little girl when I married her [Jenny]. She said, ‘When I had Jennifer, the doctor told me, ‘You should have plenty of children, it’s so easy for you; you can have a lot of children.’
“So, when she told me that, what could I say? ‘OK, honey.’ So, that’s how we had a little boy. But, she died. Some organ came out and the dumb doctor didn’t realize it. They gave her transfusions and ice to stop the bleeding. Finally the doctor called a specialist and he came down and he found the organ that had come out and he put it back in again and the bleeding stopped. But, it was just too late. Her heart couldn’t take any more. Her heart gave out.
“And, boy, I just cracked up,” he told me as he had told others. “You know, I just couldn’t take it cuz we were so happily married. It’s the only happiness I’ve had in my life was the five years with Betty in La Jolla .”[23]
Seeing Woody, his energy, his optimistic spirit, his feelings of love for people around him, I had a hard time seeing this man only happy for five years out of his life. Perhaps he exaggerated, but certainly there can be no denying that he loved his first wife to an extraordinary length.
Hot Curls
“Our boy [Jeffrey] lived but I couldn’t take care of him. I couldn’t take care of myself,” Woody told Ben Marcus.[24] “I couldn’t sleep; quit flying; quit everything,” Woody told me. “I just started bumming around the world. I was dyin’. I told the Lord: ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ So, he goes: ‘Why don’t you go to Tahiti ? You’ve always wanted to.’ You know, we always hear about the magic of ‘the South Seas .’ Next day, I was on the boat. I got my passport and everything. I left my car, the garage, my home, glider, everything. I don’t know what happened to them. I just walked out and left everything. When you’re off your rocker that way, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing.”[25]
“So, I came over to Hawai‘i and started over again. But, it took awhile,” Woody admitted. He never made it to his original destination of Tahiti . Instead, he got virtually stranded on O‘ahu in September 1940, just before the United States Hawaiian Islands .
“Surfing saved my life because I’d go out all day; Waikiki . I’d just go out on my board in the morning and sit out there all day long and surf. Lunch time, I’d dive down and get seaweed off the bottom to eat and just stay there ‘till late evening; sunset. Then, I’d go in and I’d be able to sleep a little cuz I was so damn tired from being in the sun and surfing all day. And, I survived!”
Surfers even that far back had somewhat of a bad rap. “You see,” Woody told me, “when I first surfed and came over here, surfing was looked down upon. ‘Oh, you surfing bum!’ or ‘Don’t have anything to do with him, he’s a surfing bum.’
“The missionaries were the ones that told the Hawaiians, ‘Oh, that’s just horrible, you’re just wasting your time on that sort of thing.’ Terrible thing, you know. It kind of killed the spirit of the Hawaiian people, just like missionaries killed the spirit in everything they did; took away all their customs, eh?
“Yet, I laugh. The Hawaiians should have sent missionaries to the Mainland, instead of missionaries coming over here; because, theyunderstood Christ better than the ‘religious’ people do! Cuz, they had love for every body. They loved everybody! But, the religious people said, ‘No, no. Just love the good people. All these other guys are going to hell.’ Well, of course, the Hawaiians knew nobody was going to hell. They loved everybody, which is the real Christ, you see.”[26]
“I didn’t know a soul,” Woody told Ben Marcus. “I got a bicycle and went all around O‘ahu and the different islands – Maui, the Big Island
“The missionaries changed the Hawaiian people,” Woody repeated. “They were beginning to be like us Mainlanders, when I first came over. They lost their beautiful ways. Like I told ya, when I went around the island, they cried when I left. If I go around, now, nobody’s gonna cry for me or ask me to stay there for nothin’; they pay for everything I’m doin’. No way, man! Hawaiian, haole, or anybody else.”[28]
Raised as an atheist, Woody didn’t fight in World War II because of his pacifist beliefs. “I was a conscientious objector during the war. I wouldn’t fight, no matter what. I told ‘em, ‘Look, I’ll go down there as a Red Cross. I’ll go right in the front lines.’ That didn’t worry me. ‘But, I ain’t gonna carry no gun and I’m gonna rescue any body, no matter whether he’s a German, an American or a Japanese. It doesn’t matter what he is. If he’s dying and needs help, I’m gonna help him.’ They didn’t like that. They put me ‘4-F cuz I had broken my neck flying and it bothered me all the time.”[29]
So, instead of fighting, Woody rode around most of the major Hawaiian Islands , befriended by the island people. “His first wife had passed away back in California
“You know,” Woody told me of his earliest days surfing in the Hawaiian Islands , “in the old days, there was nobody out there, you were the only one. You were just hopingsomebody would come out, cuz there wereno surfers, then. So, you were all alone; lucky if you had one guy with you.
“So, you were always hoping – glad to see someone come out. ‘Oh, yeah! Come on, come on!’”
“It’s different, now, isn’t it?” I asked.
When Woody settled back in near Honolulu, he was befriended mostly by what Wally called “The Empty Lot Boys” who had grown up to be associated as “Tavern guys” and the ones who had come up with the hot curl design.
“Yeah,” Wally said about befriending Woody, “because he was into surfing. Anybody who was that interested in surfing, you know, we’d take ‘em in; help ‘em out – that thing about helping each other. We were so enthusedabout the surf. We liked it so much, we just wanted everyone else to enjoy it.”[32]
Woody came to the Hawaiian Islands only three decades after “Surfing’s Revival” at Waikiki , on O‘ahu’s south shore. When he arrived, the action was still on the south shore. While it’s generally agreed that Hawaiians surfed the northern shores of their islands before the Twentieth Century,[33] ancient Hawaiian legends identify only a relatively small number of surf spots on the north shores of the islands. In contrast, locations on the southern shores were many. In ancient times the place to be was the Kona Coast, on the southwestern coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i, which, for instance, has more named surf breaks than the entire island of O‘ahu.
When Woody arrived, surfing’s center was the Kala-hue-wehesurf at Waikiki ,[34] known in the ancient days as Kou.[35] Yet, because of how the Hawaiian Islands catch seasonal swells, and because of the daring of a handful of big wave pioneers, it was North Shore
Beginning the set of interviews I had with Woody, on Maui, I mentioned that both Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake – both of who Woody got to know – had said and written of Waikiki getting some size, upon occasion, and was there any truth to it?
“Oh, heck yeah. Oh yeah!” Woody exclaimed in his energetic style. “My goodness, it broke all the way across before I got there. These crazy guys I was telling you about,” he referred to t “about four or five of ‘em – it was so big one year that it was closed out all the way down the coast, the big ocean liners couldn’t come in and out of Honolulu Harbor; way over 30 feet.
“So, these guys, they were so much guts, you know, they went up to Black Point. Well, at Black Point, there’s a rock cliff that goes right down to the water. It’s deep right up to the cliffs. So, the waves don’t break. The swells just come up and hit the cliff. So, what they did, they went out on the cliffs and when a set went by, they threw their boards off the cliffs and dove in and swam out. They got outside of everything that way and went around in front of Waikiki – oh, probably a mile out in the blue water. The waves were big and, of course, there’s no shoulder; one break all the way down to Honolulu Harbor
I asked him if he was talking about Wally Froiseth John Kelly