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Bright, cheery, fair-minded California surfer and surf contest organizer from Hermosa Beach, California; the first president of the 1961-founded United States Surfing Association. "Hoppy Swarts," the 

Swarts was born (1916) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of an oil businessman, moved with his family to Redondo Beach, California, and began surfing at age 14 in nearby Hermosa. He was known throughout his life as "Hoppy," the nickname given to him by his father, who was reading a Hopalong Cassidy book at the hospital on the day of Lewis's birth.

Swarts became a member of the Palos Verdes Surfing Club in 1934, along with lifelong friend and surf photographer Leroy Grannis. The smooth-riding Swarts (he later became a fine ballroom dancer), placed seventh in the 1938 Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships, took fifth in 1940, and was featured prominently in John "Doc" Ball's seminal 1946 photo book 

. Friends later said that Swarts's go-for-broke approach in the surf was in part because he was the most nearsighted surfer on the coast, and often didn't know what he was getting into. Photos of Swarts appeared in 

Swarts received a B.S. in math from Occidental College in 1941; in the mid-'40s he lived in Boston and attended MIT; he received an M.S. in engineering from U.C. Berkeley in 1949. Swarts worked for the navy, did spacecraft research for aerospace giant TRW, then became a high school math teacher. In the post-

 surf boom years of the early '60s, American beach town city councils were passing antisurfing legislation in part due to the aggressive, sometimes-malicious behavior of teenage surfers. Swarts's interest in surfing competition, surf journalist Rus Calisch later noted, was more than anything a public relations ploy. "Give society a winner, a champion, no matter what the sport," Calisch said, restating Swarts's original idea, "and it will become something they could not only understand, but cheer, and hopefully protect." Swarts himself continued to compete until 1984.

To that end Swarts became the first president of the first public surfing organization, the United States Surfing Association (USSA), formed in 1961. For four years the USSA worked as a political action group, fighting surfing restrictions on both the East and West Coasts. In 1965 the USSA changed course and began to concern itself almost exclusively with surfing competition, using the format and judging system devised primarily by Swarts. The USSA split into regional groups at the end of 1967, with Swarts—an orderly, ethical, gentle-natured manager—serving as president of the Western Surfing Association (WSA); he remained active in WSA administration and judging for the rest of his life. In 1979 he drafted documents that became the framework for the United States Surfing Federation, an umbrella group for American amateur surfing. Swarts himself kept competing until 1984.

On his way to a WSA contest in Santa Cruz in mid-1988, the 71-year-old Swarts had a stroke and died; he was then the executive director of the WSA.

Swarts was inducted into the International Surfing Magazine Hall of Fame in 1966. In the early- and mid-'60s, he owned Hoppy Swards Surfco Surfboards.

Swarts, Lewis "Hoppy"

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