Dewey Weber (August 18, 1938- January 7, 1993)

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The Little Man on Wheels was always moving. Where others stood and posed, Dewey Weber injected life and movement, helping to usher in the era of hotdogging. As a businessman, he was equally vigorous, building an elite international team of riders for his board label and pushing advertising into the modern age. Unfortunately, alcoholism was taking just as active a toll on his body, gradually weakening him from the inside out. Before he left us, he helped us see waves not as platforms for stagnant riding, but as playthings.

David Earl Weber was born in Denver, Colorado, the only child in a German working class family. Dad was a truck driver and Mom worked at the Nabisco factory. Little Dewey took to the water at age three, venturing to the pool with his babysitter and quickly learning to swim. He first gained recognition in Buster Brown shoe commercials where he acted as a little boy who lived in a shoe with his dog Tide. He was also a master with a yo-yo, three times winning the Duncan National Championship. A furious competitor, he excelled in wrestling at Mira Costa High School and became a three-time winner of the California Interscholastic Federation title.

The Webers left Colorado in 1943, relocating to Manhattan Beach, California, already an area of bustling surf activity. From atop the pier, Dewey would watch Dale Velzy and other members of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club and wish he could join in the fun. At age nine, he got his first opportunity, but it would be two years before he found the knack. Velzy soon sponsored the aggressive little tike, who was adopted by the South Bay crew as one of their own. On a surf trip up the coast, the older fellows gave young Dewey his first beer, signaling his graduation from grommethood. Little did he know it would eventually kill him.

Upon graduation in 1956, he enrolled at El Camino College, where he became an all-state wrestler. But his passion was surfing, and Dewey worked as a lifeguard -- donning a sombrero to set himself apart from the rest -- to save enough money to get to Hawaii. Once in the islands, he was mentored in the life of a waterman by Makaha chief Buffalo Keaulana and California transplant Buzzy Trent. From there, he moved on to the North Shore with the legendary class of '57, pioneering much of that now famous stretch. Weber figures prominently in the surfing progression of the pre-foam era, and is featured in period films such as Bud Browne's "Cavalcade of Surf" and "Goin Surfin'," Bruce Brown's "Slippery When Wet," John Severson's "Angry Sea," Dale Davis' "Inside Out," and Greg Noll's "Search for Surf."

By 1960, Weber returned to California, where he ran Velzy's shop, and when Velzy fell into tax troubles that shut down his operation, Weber started his own business out of the same building. The circumstances of Dewey's role in the proceedings were suspect, but he wasted no time in turning his own board company into an international success. He recruited team riders in every surfing outpost, establishing an elite stable that included Nat Young, David Nuuhiwa, Rell Sunn, Randy Rarick, Gary Propper, Mike Tabeling, Jackie Baxter and countless others. He traveled extensively to promote the boards, aggressively seeking out new dealers along the way. His advertising schemes were memorable, most notably for the Weber Performer. Dewey picked up right where Velzy had left off, churning out 300 boards a week as the premier manufacturer of the 1960s.

As the market soured toward the end of the decade, Weber's business went with it. Shortboards phased out his bread and butter, and he turned to fishing. Meanwhile, alcohol was eating away at his resolve. By the time the longboard revival came about in the 1980s, the damage his addiction had wreaked on his body was irreparable. He died of cardiac failure in 1993. Before nearly 1000 friends and admirers, his ashes were scattered in the ocean at Redondo Beach. He is survived by wife Carol. -- Jason Borte, July 2001