The son of a Southern California lifeguard who grew up a mile from the beach, it was somewhat fated that Greg would take up surfing, but it would not be a surfboard that changed his life at the age of 13. It would be a Brownie 8mm movie camera obtained with three books full of Green Stamps by his parents as a birthday gift. It was a gift that “fired up” his imagination, he once recalled.

In 1966 he joined with filmmaker Jim Freeman to form MacGillivray Freeman Films, a collaboration that was soon considered one of the genre’s most successful partnerships. Among the full-length surf films developed under their banner was the 1972 release, Five Summer Stories. Today this film is heralded by many as the finest surf movie ever made. A new digitally remastered version is now in release in celebration of its 50th anniversary.

Sadly, two days before MacGillivray-Freeman’s 1976 IMAX film To Fly! was to debut, Freeman was killed in a helicopter crash near Bishop, California. The company continues to honor his name and memory.

In 2004, Greg and his wife Barbara founded the non-profit MacGillivray Freeman Films Educational Foundation to help people of all ages expand their learning on topics showcased in the company’s films. It has enabled more than 20,000 underserved students to experience their world through MacGillivray Freeman Films, and its scientist speaker programs to bring scientists face to face with kids in classrooms.

Within a few short years she had become a leading contest surfer, the first woman (or surfer) to grace the cover of West, a prominent pop culture magazine of the time, as well as a mentor to many women competitors who followed in her groundbreaking wake.
In 1975, Mary Lou helped found the Women’s International Surfing Association (later to become the Western Surfing Association). Since that time, supporting local competitive surfing and pushing the industry to support the inclusion of women has become her life’s work.

In 2015, she received the Surfing America Midget Smith Judging Award, named after her longtime companion who passed away in 2008. As a competitor and later as a surfing event organizer, it is now readily acknowledged by many of her contemporaries that competitive surfing would not be what it is today without her leadership and unwavering devotion to the sport.

In 2016, she was named Woman of the Year by the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame. A year later, close to the summer home where she first learned to surf, she was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame.

L.J. — for “Little John” — grew up just a few blocks from the ocean and found himself hanging out at the Oceanside Pier, where he regularly body- and mat-surfed. The Oceanside lifeguards had just formed a junior lifeguard program, and L.J. and a handful of youngsters joined under the watchful eyes of Byron Jessup and Doug Tico. Soon the pint-sized kid was hauling a 90-pound hollow, finless paddleboard into the water and catching waves on it. He was hooked on surfing from the start.

L.J. soon became competent and then skilled in the era of the longboard, surfing and competing alongside such famous surfers as Joey Cabell, Phil Edwards, Miki Dora and Mike Doyle. His first “real” surfboard was a 9’6” balsa shaped by his Oceanside High School classmate Phil Edwards. A few years later L.J. won the 1963 men’s title at the U.S. Championships in Huntington Beach on a Phil Edwards-shaped Hobie foam surfboard that L.J. still owns. (You can see that board in California Surf Museum’s Stars, Cars, and Guitars exhibit.) L.J. placed fourth in the 1964 World contest held at Manly Beach in Australia.

At age 18 L.J. qualified as a lifeguard for the state of California, a seasonal commitment he kept for 28 years. In 1963 he began his career as a fireman for the city of Encinitas, retiring in 2001.

In 1989 he was the recipient of the Oceanside Longboard Surfing Club’s inaugural LeRoy Grannis Waterman’s Award for his sportsmanship in the true spirit of surfing. In addition, he was inducted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame in 1991, and in 2006 was honored with a plaque on the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach.

As his longtime friend, surfing champion Linda Benson once proudly proclaimed: “He’s truly one of the finest gentlemen in surfing, and definitely one of the greatest stylists of all time.”

In the 1960s, Mickey became a top competitive surfer. He finished runner up in the 1962 and 1963 West Coast Surfing Championships and in 1964 took third in the United States Championships. In 1965, he finished second in the U.S. Championships and took fourth in the World Championships.

In 2006, Mickey was one of three surfers invited to participate in a posthumous challenge by Miki Dora to shape a wooden surfboard and surf Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa on a big day with no wetsuit.

And lest you think it was all just fun and games in the water for Mickey, he’s also fended off aggressive sea lions while spearfishing and placed dynamite underwater to demolish a couple of old piers.

Mickey has also skied and snowboarded, raced motorcycles, soared on a hang glider (he once had a collision with a car that he missed clearing by that much) and he even spent some time bear wrestling for a sports and vacation show.

Today, he continues to design surfboards and live what has been a storied surfing life. As he recently explained to Liquid Salt, a website that celebrates surfing culture, “the ‘stoke’ I had on my first wave has never worn off.”

Has anyone ever had more fun in or out of the water than Mickey?

The event is designed as a fundraiser and to that end this was one of our most successful. But while our objective is raising money to continue our preservation and protection of surf culture, the spirit of the evening is always about our love and passion in celebrating the titans of wave-riding. In that respect this year’s Gala Fundraiser and Silver Surfer presentations might have ranked among the very best.