Ron Drummond was born in Los Angeles in 1907, r aised in Hollywood. A s a kid, his family summer vacationed at Hermosa
Beach Southern California
coastline, eventually canoe surfing waves as large as 15 feet.[1]
Photograher unknown
Ron was the quintessential “canoe surfer.”
“Well, I’ve been interested in canoeing ever since I was
fourteen years old,” Ron told surf historian Gary Lynch in an interview eight
years before his passing at the age of 89. “I remember my brother, Tommy. He’s
older; year and a half older than I am. He says, ‘Aw, you’re dumb to try to go
out in the ocean in a canoe.’ First time I brought a canoe down... we used to
spend our summers at Hermosa Beach
The tall, lanky Drummond became a track star while attending
UCLA in the mid-1920s, specializing in discus and the shot put. Throughout his
life he continued to swim, canoe, and bodysurf on into his mid-80s.[3]
“I knew [Pete] Peterson when I was a kid in high school,” Ron
recalled of that era’s most noted Southern Californian surfer. “His father
owned the bathhouse at Crystal Pier in Santa Monica ;
Ocean Park Chile
“Then, the first – second – date I had with Doris [Ron’s future
wife], it was right after the Long Beach Terminal Island Doris . About a dozen people came over
to talk to me, wondered who I was, never seen me before. I had a beard then.”[5]
“The first time I was on a surfboard, it was when I was a
lifeguard,” at the Los Angeles
“I’ve always wanted to be an adventurer, you know,” Ron
continued. “My father was an explorer… he’d been all over interior China, the
Philippine Islands and all the out-of-the-way islands, and had skirmishes with
headhunters, and all that sort of thing. Headhunters killed a lot of his men.
[One time, they lost a guy] …and a fellow – native carrier that he had in his
expedition – wanted to give him a Christian burial. So, Dad let them go in.
They sneaked into the enemy camp – these headhunters’ camp [at night] – and
they had their heads on poles and they were dancing around a big fire; real
jubilant that they’d got these heads. So, the bodies were off in the dark… my
father’s carriers got the bodies and my father took a picture of them carrying
these bodies later the next day, stretched up, you know, like they put a deer
on a pole: one end on one fellow’s shoulder and one on the other… they were
holding their noses... hot climate... [the dead bodies] were putrid.”[7]
“But anyway, all I was going to say is, I wanted to be an
adventurer, too. So, that’s why [when] I was studying mechanical engineering at
UCLA… I just figured, well, [mechanical engineering] really doesn’t interest
me... So, I heard that Eastern Canadian Mining Company was sending canoe
expeditions out to unexplored areas to get the geology of it, so if they ever
found anything that was favorable for the deposition of minerals, why, they’d
send probably 40-50 prospectors in there. So, I saw the manager of this company
when he came out to Los Angeles
“The result was, my career partner, Jack Barrington, had been
the first white man on five rivers of northern Canada Barrington River Copper Needle
River Copper Needle
River
In 1931, Ron was the first one to publish a primer on
bodysurfing, entitled The Art of Wave
Riding.[9]
At 26 pages and a print run of 500 copies, the small book is one of the first
books ever published about surfing. “One feels sorry for those who have not
learned to enjoy surf swimming,” Ron wrote in his intro. “To spend a day in the
sand developing a ‘beautiful tan’ is pleasant; but the real pleasure of a trip
to the beach is derived from playing in the breakers.” Elsewhere in the book,
Drummond defined “glide waves” and “sand busters” and step-by-step bodysurfing
instructions. Understandably, this booklet has become a prize amongst
collectors.[10]
“I started to tell you why I’m deaf,” Ron kept on track with
Gary Lynch. “I got hit by lightning and it knocked me about 15 feet flat on my
back, and I’ve never been able to hear good since. It was such a loud noise,
you know, when you hear thunder way off how loud it is, but when it’s right
next to you, why, it ruined the nerves in my ear, so I’ve never been able to
hear well since.”
“When was this?” asked Gary
“Oh, this was during the war, World War II, down in Port of Spain , Trinidad .”
Like others of his generation, Ron was drawn into World War II, although he was
already into his 30’s, age-wise, at war’s start. “I was unloading pillboxes and
tanks and things like that from a ship, and the boom came up over that ship. It
had a sealed deck, and then slings came down. I was just reaching for a sling
to hook up a pillbox, and my hand was about six inches, I guess, from the
sling. If I’d had it six inches farther – if I’d had a hold of that sling – it
would have killed me, because it burned that sling almost completely through,
three-quarter inch sling. Where it was up against the edge of the bit. I was lucky there... That’d be one of my close calls, I guess.”[11]
Drummond’s “close calls” did not keep him from seeking bigger
and bigger surf to paddle his canoe into. During and after the war, he joined a
select group of Southern California’s best watermen to ride California
“Back in the early ‘40s I surfed the Sloughs when it was huge,”
Lorrin ‘Whitey’ Harrison told Serge Dedina in
1994. “It was all you could do to get out. Really big. We were way the hell
out. Canoe Drummond came down.”[12]
“We paddled out and the surf was probably about 20 feet high or
so,” Ron remembered. “I looked out about a mile where some tremendously big
waves were breaking. I asked if anybody wanted to go out there with me, but
nobody did. So, I went in my canoe and paddled out there. I set my sights in
the U.S. and in Mexico
Ron went into a little more detail with Gary Lynch, probably
talking about the same wave: “Did I ever tell you about the big wave I caught
in a canoe down in the Tijuana Slough? … Boy, that was a whopper. That was
about forty feet high, I guess. I was right inside the curl. Boy, I thought I
was never going to make it… That was [another] one of my close calls… I guess.
“Dempsey [Holder] was the chief lifeguard down there…” On the
day when Tommy Zahn and Peter Cole came out, after Dempsey had called them to
get down to Imperial Beach pronto, Tommy and Peter paddled out, were amazed at
the size of the waves and further amazed to find Drummond already out there… “out
there where the big waves were breaking, ‘cause Dempsey talked to me later and
he said I’m the only one that had ever ridden those big waves. They were about
20 feet high in near shore. That’s where he was, I guess.
“Well, a 20-footer is a good wave, but they’re about twice that
big outside. None of the fellows would go out there with me. They’re scared of
them. They can see they are just booming over thick like that… you could run a
freight train through the curl.”[14]
Ron Drummond is generally recognized with having ridden his canoe
in surf as big as 15-feet. He and his Canadian style canoe were featured in a
1967 issue of Surfer magazine. He also appeared in two surf movies: Big
Wednesday (1961) and Pacific Vibrations (1970). He
continued to swim, canoe and bodysurf into his mid-80s. In 1990, he appeared in
a Nike ad featuring senior surfers that ran nationally within the U.S.
Links:
Capistrano Flip: http://www.canoekayak.com/canoe/capistranoflipcanoe/
Same shot, reduced: http://www.surfingheritage.org/2010/03/ron-drummond-canoe-surfing.html
[1]
Warshaw, Matt. The Encyclopedia of
Surfing, ©2003, p. 168.
[2]
Lynch, Gary
[3]
Warshaw, Matt. The Encyclopedia of
Surfing, ©2003, p. 168.
[4]
Lynch, Gary
[5]
Lynch, Gary
[6]
Lynch, Gary
[7]
Lynch, Gary
[8]
Lynch, Gary
[9]
Drummond, Ronald B. The Art of Wave
Riding, ©1931, Cloister Press, Hollywood , California
[10]
Warshaw, Matt. The Encyclopedia of
Surfing, ©2003, p. 168.
[11]
Lynch, Gary
[12]
Dedina, Serge, 1994, p. 37. Lorrin Harrison quoted.
[13]
Dedina, Serge, 1994, p. 37. Ron “Canoe” Drummond quoted.
[14]
Lynch, Gary
[15]
Warshaw, Encyclopedia of Surfing, ©2003, p. 168.
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