Bob Simmons (March 29, 1919 - Sept 26, 1954) |
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Bob Simmons is remembered as the man who introduced the foam-and-fiberglass surfboard and popularized the use of skegs on surfboards. This isn't quite the case: his fins were not the first (Tom Blake has that honor) and his foam boards were sandwiched in plywood, then glassed.
Instead, Simmons' greatest contribution to surfboard design was the application of objective hydrodynamic theory to the small planing hulls we call surfboards. And his best work was his 1950 balsa boards, although Simmons modified and built redwood planks, too, bringing them into better conformity with his hydrodynamic theories. Born in Los Angeles, Robert Wilson Simmons developed a tumor in his left ankle as a young man, and doctors said his leg would have to be amputated. His mother found an alternative practitioner who prescribed a radical clean-out diet. The tumor disappeared, and Simmons' life was forever changed. He held to the diet -- fruits, fresh juices, vitamins and grain gruel. Weakened but not beaten, young Simmons rode a bicycle to strengthen his body. Then -- bam! -- a car U-turned in front of him, and he was hospitalized with a fractured skull, a broken leg and a smashed left elbow. The head and leg healed well, but his arm was wired in a loosely extended position. By chance, a fellow patient suggested surfing as therapy. In 1939, Simmons started paddling a Tom Blake paddleboard. He also got into table tennis -- designing the first textured rubber paddles -- and carved and threw boomerangs. He got back on a bicycle and enrolled at Cal Tech in Los Angeles, where he got straight As in engineering. He quit when World War II began and became an expert machinist, working as a mathematician for Douglas Aircraft. Thanks to his arm injury, Simmons was one of the few men surfing California during the war, when beaches were fortified borders and just about every other surfer was in the military. He worked nights and quit when the waves were good, then found more work after the swells died down. He struggled with 75-pound boards. His mother helped him load it onto his car, and he dragged it down the beach to get to the surf. But Simmons was a determined and eccentric young genius who lived a Spartan existence and liked his solitude. On the day the Atom Bomb was dropped on Japan, he was heard exclaiming, "They'll ruin the world with this bomb!" He reportedly ranted all day in the lineup at Malibu, which had great surf on August 6, 1945. By the end of the war, his considerable technical skills were focused on surfboard design. He discovered the hydrodynamic studies of naval architect Lindsey Lord and started making hydrodynamic planing hulls. They were so fast, they scared the surfers who tried them. Simmons introduced Malibu great Gard Chapin to the concepts, and the two were notorious for running down slower surfers. Simmons began using the newly available fiberglass technology to reinforce the noses and sterns of his hydrodynamically improved planks, which were a huge departure from paddleboards and planks. He experimented with concaves, aspect ratios, optimum weight, scoops, kicked noses and many other design elements. Simmons also experimented with Styrofoam; the type used in radar domes on aircraft during the war. He located the materials, built his own concrete mold and blew foam blanks from which he sculpted core sections for his surfboards. By 1948, Simmons fiberglassed all of his boards -- one weighed just nine pounds. Simmons sold about a hundred of his foam-core sandwich boards in the summer of 1949 -- a prodigious number since there were fewer than a thousand surfers in California. Although limited in range, Simmons' injured arm was strong. He was a good paddler and a big-wave surfer. He was very aggressive and couldn't abide kooks dropping in on him. For much of his life, he was a restless loner and roamed the coast in his gutted '37 Ford, living on canned peaches, cottage cheese, soy beans, fruits and juices. He made a study of weather and waves, annotating detailed charts and developing theories about where the best waves in the world could be found. He traveled to Oahu in 1953 -- touring the island on a bike with a basket full of rocks to fend off mad dogs -- and confirmed his prediction that Sunset Beach would have some of the world's biggest and best waves. He surfed big Makaha with Buzzy Trent, Flippy Hoffman and Lesley Williams and Sunset with George Downing and crew -- after which he modified some of his designs. He also rode Banzai Beach -- at the place later called the Pipeline -- as witnessed by Buzzy Trent and Flippy Hoffman. On September 26, 1954, Simmons died while surfing a good-size swell at Windansea in San Diego. San Diego lifeguard Knox Harris found his body several days later. His mother refused an autopsy, and his burial place has never been revealed. It was an inauspicious and premature ending to a man who contributed as much as anyone to the evolution of surfboards. -- Drew Kampion, October 2000
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