About

Todays guest is Tom Morey the inventor of the "Morey Boogie" Bodyboard. Tom is a creative surf designer, inventor and theorist from Southern California. Tom was born in Detroit in 1935. His family moved to Laguna Beach when he was 9 and he started surfing Main Beach on a "Surf Matt". He then moved to Santa Monica and began doing "stand-up surfing" at Malibu Point. In 1958 he received a BA in Mathematics from USC and became an engineer for Douglas Aircraft. In 1969 he quit Douglas to start "Morey Surfboards". One year later he formed "Morey-Pope Surfboards" with San Diego Surf designer Karl Pope. Morey and Pope created innovative board designs such as the "Trisect" ... a travel ready, three piece board that came with its own suitcase. Morey helped develop "Slipcheck" a surfboard traction aerosol spray-on used as an alternative to surfboard wax. He invented the W.A.V.E. set, the first commercially successful removable fin system. In 1965 Tom created the "Tom Morey Invitational" Surfings first cash prize contest worth $1,500. It was a nose riding contest held in Ventura, an event that attracted all the hot surfers of the time like Mikey Munoz and Mike Hynson. Morey pushed articles for Surfer Magazine on a wide range of topics including surf contests, wave formation, riding techniques, health and artificial surf (wave pools). In a Surfer magazine article from 1971 Tom proclaimed "I am Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Gram Bell and Bob Simmons". Morey gave new life to prone surfing in 1973 by marketing his 2 year old invention called the "Morey Boggie" a 4 foot ,soft bellyboard made mostly out of closed-cell polyethylene packing foam. Easier, cheper and safer to ride than surfboards, "Boggie Boards" soon became very popular with the kids and the tourists. 80,000 units were shipped in 1977 just before Morey sold the "Boggie" to American Toy Giant "KRANSCO". Sale more than quadrupled by the end of the decade and the "Boggie Boards" were soon available in thousands of coastal grocery stores and surf shops. By the early 80's Bodyboarding had its own identity separate from surfing. Bodyboarding is described as the most popular form of surfing, as bodyboards outsell surfboards by huge margins. "Bellyboarding" is the original form of "Bodysurfing" dating back hundreds if not thousands of years, it was all but not dead in the 60's. Stand-up surfing was the most popular way to ride a wave back then with knee boarding a distant second. The "Bodyboard", as all Boggie type craft would soon be called was more than just a wave tool. According to Tom "For anybody to be a graduate of this planet" Morey said "it is essential for them to learn this activity". Millions of Boggies and Boggie knock offs were in the water in the mid 80's. Earlier Tom and Mike Doyle co developed "Morey-Doyle" soft top surfboards. Tom has been in many surf movies and documentaries such as "Golden Breed", "Blazing Longboards", "The Liquid Stage", and "Endless Summer 2". Tom was listed by Surfer magazine as one of the most influential surfers of the century.