This week marks the anniversary of Pete Peterson winning the 1938 Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships, held at San Onofre. The PCSRC was a big deal. Tom Blake won it the first year. Whitey Harrison, Dorian Paskowitz, Hoppy Swarts, Cliff Tucker—all the hot West Coasters turned out for this one. The event was held nine times between 1928 and 1941. Nobody won more than once. Except Peterson, a tall quiet masterful surfer and paddleboarder from Santa Monica, with thin blonde hair combed perfectly back off his forehead, who walked off with the winner's cup four times. And did so without waxing his board. The man so loved the gleaming multi-coat Valspar finish on his boards— which were meticulously crafted, beginning to end, by his own hand—that smearing the deck with wax was never going to happen. "It was a strange affectation," photographer Don James later noted. "Had something to do with Pete's sense of order. His decks were incredibly slick, but he somehow learned to place his weight very deliberately so he wouldn't slip off. Pete had the most precise wave positioning around."

Peterson later became a tandem champion, and at 53 he and Barrie Algaw won the 1966 World Surfing Championships. He died in 1983, at age 73, of a heart attack.

Despite the fact that Peterson was the best prewar surfer in America, and one of the most durable ever, he remains something of an enigmatic figure. A bit ignored, even. Earlier this week I talked to Lisa Peterson, 55, Pete's daughter, and she pointed out that her father has yet to be inducted to the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame. On the other hand, as Lisa admitted, her dad had a nearly pathological aversion to the spotlight. In fact, Pete talked so little about himself, Lisa told me, that she wasn't sure if she could bring much to the conversation. She did, of course.

Was your dad the first person to take you surfing?

Yes, when I was maybe five or six. I remember us bodysurfing together at Santa Monica, me on his back, with my arms locked around his neck. And at San Onofre, he'd take me out on his orange-and-white tandem board. That board was huge! I remember laying on it, and it was so wide I could barely get my fingers into the water.

This week is the anniversary of Pete winning the big contest at San Onofre. Everything about that era, and about surfing, is so different from today. Did he talk much about what things were like during the Depression?

No. He didn’t talk much about his life. And he especially didn’t talk about things like winning contests. My dad was absolutely the last person in the world to boast. I remember once, I think this was at one of the San Onofre club contests, maybe in the late ‘60s. He came out of the water, after the finals, and thought he’d done well, so before the awards ceremony he went back to the car and put on a fresh shirt and combed his hair. They do the annoucements, and he didn’t win. And I remember that he was so embarassed he’d fixed himself up, thinking he was going to win. It horrified him; that he’d presumed that way.

Craig Lockwood did a great Surfer's Journal profile on your dad, and mentioned that he and Tom Blake may have had a little rivalry going. I guess Pete wouldn’t have talked about that.

No, but I’ve heard the same thing. While my dad never said anything bad about anybody, I do know that he didn’t like how boastful Tom Blake was at times. Or not boastful necessarly, but just that he so much liked making himself the center of attention.

Were you running around the beach when Pete was winning all the tandem contests in the ‘60s?

That must have been great, your dad being the champion, everybody cheering for him.

 have been amazing, my dad being the big surf hero and all. But in the middle of it, at that age anyway, you know, it’s just your dad. I don’t remember feeling like what he was doing was that big of a deal. Those United States Championships contests at Huntington—the event itself, there was just a lot of energy in the air, and I do remember that.

Your dad was a hugely influential surfer, but in so many ways he remains an enigma to those of us who dig around in surfing’s past. Are we just not trying hard enough, or was he that way to his friends and family as well?

He was that was to us, too, in a lot of ways. He didn’t have a lot of family skills. He tried, but—he was really okay with being by himself. That came from how he grew up with his family, I think; although, again, it wasn’t something my dad talked about much.

Is there any one thing in particular about your dad that we’ve all completely missed?

He was hugely funny. Nobody’s ever mentioned that. My dad was quick to smile, and he laughed a lot. Lots of times he was really fun to be around. Also, my dad was two years older than everybody thought. His birth certificate says he was born April 14, 1913, but it was actually 1911.

Did he want people to think he was younger?

No, no, no, not at all. It was just a silly mistake, and he never bothered to fix it.

Your dad’s salvage business was located at the end of Santa Monica Pier. During that El Nino winter, in 1982-’83, one of the storms took down the end of Santa Monica Pier, along with Pete’s shop. A few months later he died. Was that just coincidence, or were the two events connected in any way?

No, I don’t think it was coincidence. [Long pause] My dad had almost everything important to him in the shop. He didn’t really keep stuff at home. All his old favorite things. Photos, boards he’d had forever, just all the close personal things he’d collected through his life, everything was in there. When the storm took down the shop, I think it just broke his heart.

Your dad died just a year or two before the sport began really getting into celebrating first-generation guys, like Pete. All of a sudden all these great old surfers were getting a lot of attention. Whitey Harrison's got a Nike ad, Rabbit Kekai was on TV, Woody Brown, on and on. Do you think Pete would have enjoyed being part of that or would have just thought it was all kind of silly?

I don't know, really. It might have been satisfying for him to be recognized, again, at that point in his life. It wasn't so much that he hated the spotlight, it was chasing it—that's what he'd never do. I mean, being in the center of attention didn't make him uncomfortable to a point where he wouldn’t, say, get up and accept an award. He’d do that. He wouldn’t say a lot, and he’d be kind of bashful, but he would not avoid it. Then afterward he wouldn't say a word about it.

Surfing changed so much in the late 1960s, right about the time Pete stopped going to all the big contests. Shortboards, drugs, long hair, localism—in three years it was almost a different sport. How did Pete respond to that? Did he keep surfing?

I don’t think he paid much attention to those changes. He just kept going in the water. Steve Boehne, in Huntington, made him some new boards, and he kept going over to the Islands to surf. My dad just felt more comfortable in the water, or on the water, than anywhere else. In those last years, he spent a lot of time on his boat. In a way, it's like my dad was born in the water. And, you know, he died on his boat. Sunday afternoon, he took a nap, and that was it.

PETE PETERSON: SO GOOD HE DIDN'T NEED WAX

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