Bob Simmons died while surfing Windansea sometime around noon, on September 26, 1954. He was 35. Simmons was the first big-name surfer to go down in the water, and along with all the crucial surfboard design work he did, his early death created a legend. This account of Simmon's final wave is pulled from people who know Simmons, plus a couple of writers. Who knows, 60-plus years later, how accurate any of this is, but I've got a lot of faith in Bev Morgan and John Elwell, who were both in the water that day.


Simmons was banging on my door at three in the morning. My wife just put a foot in the middle of my back and shoved me out of bed. "Go, you bastard." Simmons had his '37 Ford, all the windows painted black. We headed south, parked somewhere, and sacked out. In those days, you just pulled over anywhere you wanted and threw out your sleeping bag. Simmons pretty much lived in his car. So we ended up in La Jolla. Windansea was about 10 feet.


Woody Ekstrom asked Simmons that day if he'd like to surf North Bird Rock, because Windansea was almost closed out. Simmons declined, saying that Windansea was his spot, and he was happy there. Woody left Simmons sitting on a chunk of sandstone, under a hazy sun, finishing off a quart of vanilla ice cream


Simmons and Bev Morgan showed up at Windansea that morning. There was some good sets, some good rides, but long waits in between. It wasn't as big as Windansea could get. Lot of west in the swell.


We paddled out. I got a couple. I watched Bob get a few, and I saw him go in and get his board a couple of times.


Despite the churlish condition of the surf, a handful of the more rugged riders, including Elwell and Simmons, rode that wicked stuff for an hour, making some sensational runs and suffering some fantastic wipeouts.


It started to close out around noon, at low tide. We'd been out all morning. A good-sized set came in. I took the first wave and Simmons took the third. I was paddling back out, and he was taking off really late. It was just an awful wall of water. Bob stood up and leaned way back, trying to steady himself. Then he fell off, feet first, right in front of the board. Bob must have got a terrific axing. After going down the drain like that on a takeoff, he'd usually come right up and give a hideous laugh. This time I didn't hear anything. I paddled over the wave, looked back, and saw several boards being tossed high in the soup. Several heads were up and swimming.


Carl Ekstrom clearly remembers standing on the beach after surfing that day, conversation casually driving between him and Ronald Patterson and Mike Diffenderfer. Suddenly Diffenderfer turned toward the ocean and said, 'Hey, it looks like he's bodysurfing," referring to Simmons, who had lost his board. Ekstrom looked over too. "But all I saw were empty lines of whitewater."


Some kid saw Simmons with a bleeding head swimming in. He told the kid he was alright, and kept swimming.


When Elwell got to the beach he saw a kid pulling Bob's board out of the water. A crowd had gathered, and several other kids ran down to help the first one carry the board to dry sand. Elwell hurried up to them. "Where's Bob?" he asked. Nobody knew.


I got hungry and went in for lunch. Bob's board was leaning up against the shack, so I stacked mine up there too and went to the car to get some food. Simmons always had a sack of oranges in his car. Everybody had been talking about North Bird, so I figured Bob had walked down there to check it out. An hour or so went by and I started to get a little concerned. So I started asking everybody if they'd seen Bob. One of the guys said he'd seen him dive under a wave just as three or four surfers rode across the face. He wondered if maybe Bob got hit by a fin. All I could do was keep waiting, but he never did show up.


Three days after he disappeared, a lady spotted Simmons floating near shore, but his body rolled back out to sea and was again lost from sight. Later that morning, Don Okey told my brother Bobby where the body would wash up, and that's where they finally saw it, visible through the waves on the inside lefts at Windansea. Somebody yelled 'Grab him!", and it was my brother Bobby who waded in and held on to keep Simmons from washing back out to sea. He said his fingers felt sticky, like touching masking tape, for a long time after that.


Everybody wanted to know exactly how Simmons died, but by the time they found the body, he'd been banging around the reefs for a couple of days, and you couldn't tell what happened.


Simmons was a fantastic surfer. He rode the really big waves. One day he got wiped out at Windansea. The board came in but he never came up. The mysterioso thing was how he could have died at all. Simmons was . . . immune, he was plugged into the whole pattern, he could feel the whole Oh Mighty Hulking Sea, he didn't have to think it out step by step. But he got wiped out and killed. Very mysterioso.

BOB SIMMONS' LAST WAVE: A BRIEF ORAL HISTORY

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