Boogie board’s wild ride took shape 50 years ago
Tom Morey’s creation changed how people ride waves, have fun in the ocean
Tom Morey was looking for a way to seal a piece of foam to create a small wave-riding board, an idea to use scraps of old surfboards that would allow him to ride waves on his belly. The Laguna Beach native, living in Hawaii at the time, found a newspaper dated July 7, 1971, in the trash from a few days earlier. He ran a hot iron across the paper to waterproof the board, putting a final stamp on and marking the moment the Boogie board was born.
The Boogie board is turning 50 and beach bashes around the world are in the works for the milestone, including a casual gathering of enthusiasts at T-Street Beach in San Clemente on Sunday to mark the occasion. More formal celebrations are planned for Carlsbad on Saturday, with meetups at beaches around the globe and an online auction selling memorabilia that kicked off Tuesday.
Hawaii made an official proclamation a few weeks ago to stake its claim as the board’s birthplace, giving Morey recognition as the “Father of Boogie Boarding” and declaring July9 the “Day of the Boogie.” There also are plans for a monument not far from where Morey was living and first rode the board near the surf break Honl’s at Wai’aha beach on the Big Island.
In the five decades since Morey touched water with his creation, millions of people have experienced the thrill of riding a wave using versions of what’s now commonly called a bodyboard, making it one of the most influential inventions to hit the ocean.
“It is all to just honor a man and his invention that changed all of our lives,” said Patti Serrano, who is heading the 50th anniversary celebration plans. “Tom Morey has probably been the most significant person to get people in the water. … There’s no one who has created anything of this magnitude worldwide.”
Morey grew up in Laguna Beach, by the 1950s a well-known, hot-dogging nose rider who later owned a surf shop in Ventura, where he held the first professional, paid surf contest that drew the area’s top wave riders.
But by his 30s, he moved to Hawaii to enjoy a more tropical surf life. He was 37years old when he decided to cut a big surfboard in half, water sealing it with the newspaper, the words transferring onto the board.
Morey, who recently moved to Laguna Woods with his wife, Marchia, recalled in a 2019 interview what his first ride was like.
There were a half-dozen guys out in the water that fateful day. Morey put his swim fins on and paddled out into the 3- to 4-foot surf to test the small foam board tucked under his body.
“With this, you can feel the shape of the wave. I pick out my first wave and swing around, stuff the board and take off. I’m heading down the drop. I steer it to the right,” he recalled. “It just keeps going straight.”
The next wave, he figured out how to turn.
“I can feel the suction and I pull my legs and fins out of the water,” he described. “I’m learning how to utilize this wonderful thing that surfboards don’t have. … You can bend this board to the contours of the wave, over the drop and go down. I can steer it, down the face, bank it across.”
It was different than riding traditional big boards. He figured out how to maneuver with the wave, how to bend the nose down just right.
“These are wonderful sensations,” he recalled. “With nobody to share it with.”
Morey still remembers the beautiful weather that day the Boogie board was born and how one by one the surfers exited the water as the tide dropped, their fins in danger of hitting the shallow rocks.
“I can surf in an inch of water,” Morey said. “What a moment.”
Marchia, eight months pregnant at the time, was the second rider to give it a spin.
“She’s standing on the reef and the water sucks out,” Morey said. “She can just use the board to catch the wave and carry herself over the rocks. Thereafter, I built another one.”
The surfers nearby hardly took notice of what would become history in the making as Morey rode wave after wave on his belly.
After one of his lone sessions, a guy walked up and asked: “How can I buy one of these? Do you want to sell one?” Morey came up with a price on the spot.
“He peels off $10 and I’m in business,” Morey recalled of his first sale.
Many moving parts came together to start production on Morey’s vision. Friends loaned money. They moved from Hawaii to Carlsbad to get a factory going. They had to talk surf shop owners into stocking the boards, greeted by much hesitation for the new kind of board.
At first, the board was called SNAKE, an acronym for Side, Navel, Arm, Knee and Elbow. But Morey quickly learned the name made people wary, so he renamed it the Boogie board, after his love for blues music.
Morey took out a mail-order advertisement in Surfer Magazine. The price for a board would be $37, because he was 37 years old.
He got three orders when the first ad went out, enough to put that money into making more boards.
Soon, he was selling hundreds of boards a week. He remembers one of his best customers, Ed Gottschlich, owner of the Oak Street Surf Shop in Laguna Beach. He put in an order for two dozen, then 30 more.
One day he asked Morey a question.
“By the way, could you use some money upfront? How about I give you 50% down?” Morey recalled. “These are the dear souls out there … that have a heart.”
Serrano’s life course was changed by the thrill of the ride and Morey, who hired her to help with operations when they started the Carlsbad factory in the mid ’70s.
She was on her way to becoming a lawyer when one ride on the Boogie board changed it all. She was hooked.
“I went back to Tom. I was sopping wet. I remember that feeling,” she said. “I wanted to duplicate that feeling for others.” When she went to sell the boards at surf shops, she was greeted with cold shoulders. So she came up with an idea to travel to beaches across the country with 30 boards and flags to put around them on the sand.
Kids gathered, all wanting to give it a try. When their turns were over and they pleaded with their parents to buy one, she’d send them to the nearest surf shops, ensuring shop owners would want to have them in stock.
Serrano dubbed the demo days “The Morey Boogie Challenge,” and brought pro riders out to show what could be done.
It was at one of these clinics that Jay Reale, who owns e-bodyboarding in San Clemente, remembers his life changing forever.
Reale was a young kid in Maryland in the late ’70s when a Boogie board made an appearance at his favorite beach.
His older brother had one he had ridden a few times, but watching the pros showed him how to push the limits on the boards, planting a seed for him to seek out his own pro bodyboarding career.
“I wanted to be part of that world,” Reale said. “It was so exciting for me when they came to my town. I couldn’t believe people could do those things on waves. That cemented my life riding waves on a bodyboard.”
You could get air on the board above the lip, tuck into barrels, spin around and come up with your own new moves.
“There was no blueprint for it,” Reale said.
But the Boogie board wasn’t just for people who wanted to go pro. It was something anyone could ride with ease.
“I would say the Boogie really created a way to make riding waves in the ocean accessible to everyone,” Reale said. “Once the Boogie came around, that opened the floodgates for people who weren’t maybe good swimmers or comfortable in the ocean, but they could catch a wave first crack.”
Reale competed as a pro through the ’80s and today his career revolves around selling bodyboards, even hosting travel trips for enthusiasts to exotic places like Tahiti.
“There’s plenty of people in our sport who have parlayed their way into careers,” he said. “That was the ultimate goal, to build my brand around the lifestyle … to get them on their first bodyboard, see that excitement vicariously — the same as 40 years ago when I started riding. I see that on the new faces that get into the sport. I still enjoy it and can pass that on to new people.”
Morey sold the Boogie board and the trademark in 1977. Today, it’s owned by Wham-O, which mass produces the boards and sells at big-box retailers around the world. The company owns the trademark — including the Tom Morey name — which is why similar wave-riding boards must be called a “bodyboard,” and not a Boogie board.
Today, Boogie boards and bodyboard designs can be found beyond the ocean — slipping down snow, floating down rivers and pulled behind boats at lakes.
Reale believes it was never Morey’s intent to make a business that would change the world, rather he simply wanted to experiment with a new surf craft.
Morey has invented many things through the years, revolutionizing the removal fin and coming up with wave-pool ideas way before their time.
“He has a super crazy, inventive mind,” Reale said. “He’s invented many things besides the Boogie, but that’s the biggest contribution to wave riding.”
Many people assume Morey became rich off the invention.
“It probably could have been some sort of royalty deal so he could be set for life. But he didn’t,” Reale said. “I’m not sure if he regrets that or not.”
Marchia Morey said looking back at those early years “makes you time travel to 50 years ago.”
“So much went on before you see the precursor to what you know today as a Boogie board,” she said. “All the people who supported.”
Morey often changes the subject when asked about the past, instead preferring to talk about the future and ideas he has for the next best thing.
“Everyone tries to heap all this praise on him; he’s reluctant to take it,” Reale said. “He kind of shrugs it off. He’s really unassuming. He doesn’t think as highly of himself as others think of him. He’s a reluctant hero, I think.”
For Morey, the Boogie board is just another way to surf waves, with some 100 million who got to experience the thrill because of the board he created, he said.
For any other inventors looking to create, Morey, 86, advises them to not put it off.
“You better damn well do it right now,” he said on a recent day. “Right now is what’s important, that’s all you have.”
If you go
The online auction, with proceeds going to Morey, started on Tuesday.
The event on Saturday in Carlsbad at St. Michael’s by the Sea starts at 10 a.m. and lasts through the day, with panel discussions, food and a paddle-out planned.
The wave-riding session on Sunday at T-Street Beach in San Clemente kicks off at 10 a.m. with a gathering at e-bodyboarding’s office afterward starting at 2 p.m. at 1303 Calle Avanzado.
For more information on the festivities, go to boogie50years.com.