Tom Morey

IN 1951, 16-YEAR-OLD TOM MOREY was strolling down Laguna’s Chicago Beach when he stumbled on an old redwood surfboard. He borrowed the board and, for the first time in his life, rode a wave standing up. Morey remembers that first ride as a sea change in his life.

“Revelation is nothing spooky or weird; there’s this ‘thing’ you’re looking for, and you don’t know what it is until you reveal it,” says Morey, 70, now an Oceanside resident and known as “Y” to his friends.

Morey and surf legend cronies Hobie Alter, Bob Simmons and Mickey Dora—and Gidget—personified surfing fever in the 1950s. But those years were also painful; Morey broke his nose and ribs in several surfing run-ins with his board. He became determined to create a safer “stick.”

A competitive surfer in his free time, he worked in aerospace engineering, developing ways to build lightweight aircraft structures. After exiting corporate life in 1964, Morey founded Tom Morey Skeg Works and later, Morey Surfboards. In 1968, he moved to Hawaii, pulled by the surf and weather. Guided by his engineering background, he invented the Boogie board in 1971, fulfilling his desire to provide a safer experience on the waves.

When Morey and his wife, Marchia, returned to California in 1975, they lived in a trailer in Leucadia while looking for a home. “We were shopping for someplace nice, not too expensive, and good for raising children,” he says. “Carlsbad was the right place.” They found a home for $24,500.

Morey manufactured the Boogie board in Carlsbad and shaped the evolution of surfboard design. The small, easy-to-handle bodyboards coaxed beachgoers worldwide into a love affair with the surf. In 1999, he began developing the Swizzle board, a line of soft, lightweight performance surfboards. His boards use polypropylene, a noncrushable material with “friendly” give, also used in automobile bumpers. Most surfboards use polyurethane foam. Because of his unconventional choice of materials, Morey’s inventory wasn’t affected by the recent closure of the main supplier of polyurethane foam.

In discussing the future, Morey’s outlook on life shines through. “When you paddle out to surf, you may have some big notion of where you’re going,” he says. “But when you get out there, the waves look different. You’ll make other choices than you’d planned. So I’m surfing life and looking for opportunities that might come along.”

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