John Severson's 1963 movie The Angry Sea came to a shuddering close with the wipeout you see here. Tommy Lee, Waimea Bay. Big-wave ambitions were slaughtered coast to coast as the auditorium lights came up and the local grems shuffled out into the night, hollow-eyed at what they'd just witnessed onscreen.

Who was Tommy Lee? On short notice, I can't find much on him here in my office or online. Lee was a dedicated big-wave rider, and died in 2007. No relation to Sammy Lee, another excellent Hawaiian surfer from the early '60s.

The only thing of interest I came up with on Tommy Lee—and it's pretty great—is this 1968 Petersen's Surfing article, "Recollection of Winter '62," by Steve Pezman. No data or bio info on Lee, but quite a testimony to who he was a person and a surfer.

The North Shore was deserted, but the giant waves were there . . . and so was Tommy Lee.

That’s the way it began. Mammoth! Sixteen days of Waimea in October and November. The winter surf came early that year. Way back on October 12, 25-foot Waimea was blowing minds. “Why, just yesterday it was fun Threes.” (A groovy summer spot in Waikiki). Some of the guys began to bitch about it. “Man, is Waimea doing it again? How many times have we had to handle that place this year?” Then one morning everyone awoke to the heavy rumble, and looked at each other, and looked at the closed-out North Shore, and split to Makaha. Bob Beadle and I left too. I can’t remember why, but for some reason we didn't make it. So we nursed Bob's old Chrysler limo back to the North Shore, doing the big glide from the pineapple plateaus to Haleiwa and out towards his house at Waimea.

Coming around the west side of the bay, we could see it was good. The size hadn’t dropped, but the swell had straightened out. It was big! Really big! We drove slowly around the edge of the bay, watching, feeling the power. Suddenly Tommy Lee came roaring past us on the left, two guns rattling in the back of his wagon. We pulled up together at the point. “Looks good, eh?” he grinned, sticking his head out of the window. “Going out?” His eyes followed ours as we squinted out through the toilet bowl turmoil of the inner bay and scanned the outside walls that pushed up and up and up and then bounced even higher before throwing a thick lip way out and way down. Beadle and I figured we’d eat lunch, then give it another look. There were a lot of close-out sets, still. Close-outs can be a bummer. Lee agreed and smoked off down the road to look at Sunset.

Beadle and I sat in his kitchen, eating breakfast and looking out the window now and then, building ourselves up for the scene. Suddenly I stood bolt upright. A brown body had just flashed up the face of a rolling mountain and dropped back out of sight behind the wave. We ran out the door, onto the point, and stared hard. It was Tommy Lee out by himself! We made our way across a lava flow, and squatted down against a rough lava rock wall. No talking, just the roaring sound of waves hammering against the jagged point. Bob and I looked at each other. Nobody rides Waimea alone! Tommy doesn’t even know we’re here. Wow! No cameras. No people. No one! We watched him take five waves, each one between 25 and 30 feet. He took off deep every time, from behind the boil. The takeoffs were impossibly late, and the from where we sat the waves looked bottomless.

We didn’t see Tommy come in. He never saw us. In Tommy's mind, he was there alone, the whole time. Big deal, you say? Maybe, maybe not. But I recall that one thing more than almost being snuffed myself at the Bay, more than all the perfect days at Sunset or those afternoons at Velzyland. It was a big winter. For me, seeing Tommy Lee all alone at Waimea, was a big deal indeed.

WATCH: TOMMY LEE'S SPINE-TINGLING "CANNONBALL" WIPEOUT!

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