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Diminutive blond child-star surfer from Ormond Beach, Florida; third-place finisher in the 1966 World Surfing Championships at age 14. "She was a natural," fellow Floridian champ Gary Propper said of Munro. "Quiet and meek and tiny, but a total standout, head and shoulders above the rest of the East Coast girls. People came out in droves to see her."

Munro was born (1952) in Daytona Beach, Florida, the daughter of an architect, raised in Ormond, and began surfing at age 10. At 11 she showed up at Ormond Pier to watch the Florida State Surfing Championships. Organizers announced that they needed another female surfer to round out the women's division; Munro's friends coaxed her into entering, she borrowed a board—and won the contest. The victories piled up from then on, and in 1965 and 1966 she won the East Coast Surfing Championships. "I surfed daily," Munro later recalled. "I surfed in the ice cold with no wetsuit. My sister would sit in the car with the engine running, and I'd stay out till I was numb, come in, thaw out in the car, and get back in the water."

Munro never got over a childhood fear of big surf, but had near-perfect balance and exceptionally quick feet, and by 1965 she was the best female noserider in the world. In the 1966 world titles, held in San Diego, she finished behind winner Joyce Hoffman and runner-up Joey Hamasaki. Munro was still in middle school. After the event, she stayed in California and competed in the Laguna Masters, in Redondo Beach, and placed runner-up to Hoffman.

Munro quit surfing in 1968 at 16, in part because she'd been teased in school for being a tomboy. She also dropped out of high school. At 18 she joined a commune, at 20 she was married, at 33 she had four children, and at 38 she "began to dream about surfing" and started riding a longboard after not having ridden a wave for 22 years. "In about 20 minutes," Munro later said, "I was right back into it. I'd been through a lot of changes over the years, and when I returned to surfing it was like getting back to Mimi again."

In 2001, at age 49, she won the women's pro division of the Cocoa Beach Easter Surfing Festival. Munro was inducted into the East Coast Surf Legends Hall of Fame in 1996.

Munro, Mimi

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