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Chuck Hasley, founding president of the legendary Windansea Surf Club of La Jolla in the 1960s, which came to be characterized as a "talent-studded surfing frat house," has died. He was 69.
Hasley, owner of a silk screen and embroidery business in La Jolla, died Jan. 2 of injuries suffered in a single-car accident in Pacific Beach. Chris Hasley said his father had just left work when he lost control of his car in the rain and hit a tree.
A former high school basketball coach, Chuck Hasley was known for his organizational skills, sense of humor and for having what his son called "a little bit of the devil in him."
"He was a Pied Piper kind of guy," said Carl Ekstrom, an early member of the Windansea Surf Club. "He was fun to be around, and people were attracted to him."
During its heyday under Hasley's direction in the 1960s, the Windansea Surf Club, which was Hasley's idea, boasted some of the best-known names in surfing, including Hobie Alter, Del Cannon, Mickey Dora, Phil Edwards, Joyce Hoffman, Margo Godfrey, Mickey Munoz and Donald Takayama.
The club and its members won numerous surfing contests. But, according to surf historian Matt Warshaw, the organization that is named after La Jolla's premier surf break was even better known for the hard-partying style and rebellious attitude shared by most of its members.
"There was this really raucous sort of blond-haired, beach-rebel image that surfing had in the early and mid-'60s, and it was very much typified by Windansea," said Warshaw, author of the recently published "The Encyclopedia of Surfing," which includes an entry on Hasley.
Locals who surfed at the Windansea surf break were known as fun-loving rebels long before the Windansea Surf Club was formed, Warshaw said. A late 1950s surf film made by Greg Noll, for example, captured young Windansea surfers sliding down a storm drain to the beach wearing Nazi uniforms that had been brought home by their World War II veteran fathers.
"By the time the club was formed, it was drawing from that pool of surfers: They really had that Windansea sort of mind-set," Warshaw said.
Hasley was working at the Hobie Surfboard Shop in Pacific Beach when he and several other local surfers began talking about the Malibu Invitational in 1963.
Only the first nine clubs to send in $100 would be accepted into the contest, Hasley later wrote in a club history. "However, in order to participate in the surf contest, you had to be a member of an established surf club." Rather than surf for another club in the area, Hasley suggested starting a club of their own called the Windansea Surf Club. He knew there once had been a surf and ski club in the area and wrote, "I figured the people up the coast would remember there was a club at Windansea and think it was the same club."
A club logo was quickly updated, and Hasley was named president. He assembled what Warshaw in his book called "an all-star surf squad." Among the 10 who surfed in the Malibu contest, in addition to Hasley, were Joey Cabell, Skip Frye, Rusty Miller, L.J. Richards, Butch Van Artsdalen and future "Endless Summer" co-star Mike Hynson.
To get to the contest in Malibu, Hasley rented a bus for what he later called in his club history "the most radical trip ever made with the most radical surfers ever born¦ but that is another story."
Where Hasley left off, Warshaw picked up.
"The legend is they had a band in the bus, they loaded in cases of beer and booze and left the evening before the contest," Warshaw told The Times. "They just rock-and-rolled all night and pulled up to Malibu with everybody going full speed, and everybody sort of fell out of the bus, either hung over or still drunk."
By day's end, however, the Windansea Surf Club had placed five surfers in the six-man final, and Cabell won the contest.
"Under Hasley's direction," Warshaw wrote in his book, "Windansea Surf Club was a force in California surfing for the next five years Of the many top surfers recruited for the Windansea Surf Club, Ekstrom said, "I don't think that would have happened if he had not been here. He really did have a big impact on the history of surfing in this area in those years."
The Windansea Surf Club, Ekstrom said, "was just all centered around having a good time. Humor played a big part in what was going on, and Chuck had a really quick wit. Humor was a huge part of his life."
Born in Tipton, Okla., in 1934, Hasley moved with his family to Seal Beach in 1941. He began surfing at age 10.
He earned a master's degree in education from what is now Cal State Long Beach in 1957, and was a basketball coach at Santa Ana High School from 1958 to 1961.
In the mid-1960s, Hasley and club member Hynson opened Windansea Sport, a La Jolla surf shop. But in 1970, according to an interview he did for Warshaw's surfing encyclopedia, Hasley was convicted of selling marijuana and served four years of a 15-year sentence.
In 1981, he opened Windansea Silkscreen and Embroidery in La Jolla, which he continued to own and operate until his death. He also taught surfing, including instructing his grandchildren.
In addition to his son Chris, of Del Mar, Hasley is survived by four other children: Charles of Ramona, Lucas of Irvine, Paul of Carmel Valley and Kari Yates of Alta Loma; a sister, JoyceAnn Capritta of Westminster; and 10 grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today at Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla Cove.
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