JEFF JOHNSON, 1943-2009

                                                            For Patti, Trent, Pete and Jack

 Jeff Johnson and I were best friends from early childhood and spent great and expansive time together. We played marbles, baseball, basketball, football, boxed, and went to American Martyrs Catholic School in Manhattan Beach, California. Early on, Jeff became an avid surfer and devoted himself to it. After graduating in the class of ’61 from Mira Costa High School, Jeff went off to Berkeley to college and I went to UCLA. After graduating, he and Patti moved to Santa Cruz for a while and his water life persisted. Eventually, they moved to the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii and I visited them out there in the early 70s. Jeff was a consummate big wave surfer; he was also skilled at spearfishing, and various kinds of deep sea fishing. He later took up building houses, and I think did well. I saw Jeff and his wife Patti (who also graduated from Micohi) at our class reunion in 1981 (which was a blast) and we spent the night at Patti (Thatcher’s) parents house just off Marine St. in MB. Jeff and Patti had three sons, Trent, Petey and Jack. (Jack Johnson has gone on to become an international rock star and is also active in green politics.) I had heard a few years back that Jeff was dealing with cancer from one of his friends who visited San Miguel. One fond memory I have with Jeff and Patti is of a warm Hawaiian evening in 1972 going to the Pearl City Tavern for dinner and then to a Honolulu concert by Elvis Presley, his Aloha from Hawaii show. It was an expansive occasion and the three of us had a rocking good time.

Jeff became a legendary Hawaiian surfer and lived the life of  an ocean man in a way that was unique, admirable, and quite seriously—of a piece with his soul. The North Shore is in many ways the sacred Grail for major surfing in the world, and Jeff loved all the famous spots with a vast and cheerful embrace of their multiple moods and changes in the many years he lived out there. I can imagine Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline all breaking this morning in honor of Jeff Johnson, who surfed them all with such skill and such joy.

Bill Pearlman