 ohn Whitmore is the ultimate South African surfing legend.
He was the Cape surfing pioneer, the country’s first surfboard
maker, a star in Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, the first
Western Province and SA contest surfing administrator and
chairman, Springbok team manager, uncle by marriage
to the Paarman surfing clan, not to mention that he
discovered Elands and Jeffreys, among dozens of other
South African surf spots. But scratch beneath the surface
and you will find so many more stories untold of his myriad
accomplishments than are widely known (and, sadly, these
days many of our groms are not even aware of who he
is). John’s astounding influence on South African diving,
surfing and Hobie Cat sailing is truly far-reaching and, to
this day, still affects all of us who play on our coastline.
Whitmore’s sister-in-law, Patty Gerstle, recalls how one of John’s own
favourite tales concern when he was at high school at Christian Brothers’
College (CBC) in Sea Point. By then long-smitten by the ocean, the teenage
John spent most of his lessons daydreaming, staring out the window at his
beloved Atlantic, sparkling tantalisingly at him through the glass. On one such
day, his teacher admonished him for not paying attention and said to him
something along the lines of, “John, you will not make a living out of the sea,
but out of what I teach you here in class.”
“He always wanted to go back to CBC and tell that teacher, ‘hey look what I
got from my sea,’” laughs his daughter, Peta.
Early Days On March 30, 1929, John Thornton Whitmore was born in Sea
Point, Cape Town. An only child and laatlammetjie (his mom gave birth to him
when she was 40 years old), his parents Dot and Percy divorced when he
was still a tot. John never knew his dad, who moved back to the Transvaal,
and was only reunited with him when he was much older. He grew up in an
unconventional, but comfortable and loving household in a spacious flat just
above High Level Road. Doting embers included his Afrikaans grandmother,
his mom, who was a retired schoolteacher, and a handful of her unmarried
siblings. The famous quote by eminent psychologist Sigmund Freud, “A man
who has been the undisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the
feeling of a conqueror,” could wholly apply to John Whitmore, who became
legendary for his single-minded ‘take charge’ attitude toward life.
As a “pik,” John spent most of his weekends and holidays on the Sea
Point beachfront, at a rocky cove down the road called Boat Bay, where the
fishermen used to row their 10-foot tin boats out to catch fish and kreef. In a
family recording of John talking about his surfing origins at his farm in Elands
Bay shortly before his passing, in a frail and phlegmy voice the Oom himself
recounts how he first tuned into the glide, standing up in the tinnies as they
returned through the gullies to shore. “That was my first feeling of picking up
the energy of the wave and using it,” he described, “and surfing, right then, it
became a part of my life.”
Yet it would be some years before John would come to know that such
a pursuit even existed. After school, with the energy of the cold, blue sea
pumping through his veins, John poured most of his spare time into making a
living fishing, kreefing and hunting for perlemoen. In the late 1940s and into
the 50s, along with his buddies such as Roy McGregor, Bernie Wrankmore
and John Morgens, they introduced skin diving with spear guns, and soon
afterwards scuba diving (both at first with self-made equipment) on the
Atlantic coast and in False Bay. Their exploits are still celebrated as being key
to the development of underwater sports in South Africa.
At 17, John had met and courted a pretty young girl from Gardens, Cape
Town, called Thelma Krause. Though, says Patty, John’s mom only allowed
them to marry at 21, when he had completed his agricultural studies at
Elsenberg College in Stellenbosch. When Thelma was 15 she left school,
started working and went to stay with her sister Pearl, now married to Fred
Paarman, who lived on the water’s edge at Glen Beach in Camps Bay. By
then Thelma’s cousins, Timmy and Ken (father to Donald, Johnny and co.)
and a handful of other fishing and diving beach bums, including John, had
already begun bodysurfing at Clifton and Glen Beach. After they got married,
the young couple then lived for a short time in the Krause family home over
Kloof Nek, but when Thelma’s parents separated, they moved back to the
beach with Thelma’s much younger sister Patty and their mom, to a small
bungalow in Beta Road, Bakoven.
Makaha Moment One day, sometime in the early 1950s, whilst thumbing
through a US magazine called ‘Skin Diver’ (imported by a diving crony),
John came across a photograph of surfing, which proved to be a revelatory
moment. “[It] had a Jantzen ad on the back page, with a bunch of guys, one of
them was George Downing I think, riding Makaha surf,” said John in the family
recording. “Okay the photo was a bit tilted, but nevertheless it was a fantastic
spectacle of these three guys riding this monstrous wave on surfboards, and
that’s when it clicked: bing bang, I had to get into it.”
Around this time, Earl Krause (Thelma’s younger brother, who had also by
then moved into the Bakoven bungalow) and his schoolmate, Gordon Verhoef,
had begun dabbling in making a surfboard. This was of the old wooden/canvas
type. Their instruction came from an article by Hawaiian surfing legend, Tom
Blake, in a 1939 edition of Popular Science Magazine they had come across.
As Earl tells the story, the boys had converted a space in the now-deserted
family homestead into a workshop, but as he now confesses, neither was very
good with their hands and struggled building the board.
John, though, was a born builder/inventor/handyman (“a true whole
earth catalogue type of guy” as Clive Barbe, another of his later associates,
describes him), so as soon as he got wind of what they were up to, he stepped
up and eventually, in his inimitable manner, took over construction, says Earl,
completing that seminal first board sometime in early 1954. With that board,
John is believed to have surfed at Glen Beach and Clifton, making him the first
person to do so on the Atlantic coast. “After this canvas board,” remembers
Earl, “John developed a plywood board and then a laminated veneer board,
but both were very heavy and not easy to surf.”
Under John’s creative direction, the younger trio of
Earl and Timmy Paarman, as well as another diminutive
kid from the area called Brian “Pikkie” Higgo, began
surfing regularly on the Atlantic seaboard. They soon
bumped into Bakoven local, David Meneses, who later
became the foremost big wave rider of his generation.
David had already for a time been riding waves over
the reef at nearby Barley Bay, which only breaks in the
hugest of west swells, in a canvas canoe, wearing a
long raincoat for protection from the elements. In his
infamous deep chuckle, John himself laughed heartily
at the memory of lanky, 6’4” Meneses, raincoat flapping
behind him, paddle in hand, dropping into big waves in
his small skiff. Another classic story about Barley Bay
is how the crew later sank boats, dropped fridges and
even an old Beetle onto the reef in an attempt to get it
to break in smaller swells.
Better Boards Apart from the first few sticks they
spawned in the old Krause home and under John’s
bungalow, all the later boards were made in a garage
of the Meneses family, who had a couple of houses
overlooking Barley Bay, a short walk from John’s place.
David had convinced his neighbouring aunt and uncle to
let them take over their unused garage and John soon
converted the space into a rudimentary factory. He then
came across the concept of shaping a surfboard out of
polystyrene, which they were able to obtain from various
sources in the refrigeration industry. “In 1955,” John
recalled, “I produced a board of rather primitive shape,
but it surfed. We surfed it at the Kom - you could surf out
there at any size on that old board. But at the time we
hadn’t enough technical knowledge... the boards were
glassed with matt and they should have been glassed
with cloth, as matt has no tensile strength.”
Through much experimentation and many failures
(mainly due to the resin eating at the styrofoam and
the boards snapping like twigs in the heavy Cape surf),
their designs and building techniques slowly improved,
incredibly all totally independent from outside influence,
bar the odd photo or article they saw in random
magazines. “John developed the system of shaping
the foam and glueing a wooden stringer down the
middle to prevent the board from breaking,” recalls
Earl. To solve the problem of resin dissolving the foam,
they tried epoxy and Whitmore, ever resourceful, then
sealed the blank with cascamite glue, covered this with
butter muslin cloth and then painted it with PVA before
applying the cloth and resin finish. It was a laborious
process, but it worked.
Bakoven Beachboys Through the mid to late ‘50s John
Whitmore’s bungalow became the HQ for the gestating
Cape Town “surfie” scene. They surfed and bodysurfed
(including out front at a short left called ‘Whitmore’s’),
fished, dived, braaied and partied. Though they later
discovered surfing had been performed at Muizenberg
as early as WW1 and there were a few surfers on the
False Bay side (still riding Crocker ski “kook boxes”), by
all accounts the Atlantic crew were a far hardier bunch.
Favouring speedos, they didn’t baulk at the cold water
(though they sometimes surfed in rugby jerseys and
always had a driftwood fire on the beach, kept stoked
by the grems, and maybe some coffee, muscadel
or whisky to keep warm). They had no leashes, but
thanks to their comparatively advanced boards, were
progressing faster and charging hard in solid surf.
Due to local knowledge gained from years of diving
and fishing they found surf all over the peninsula.
They began at Sea Point at spots such as Gas Works
(Bantry Bay), The Pipe (Mouille Point lighthouse) and
Thermopylae. They also travelled much further afield,
including their beloved Kom, which, thanks to the
smoothing effect of the kelp, was ideal for riding the
rough-hewn boards. They also occasionally sessioned
the adjacent Kommetjie reefs, camped at Scarborough
and surfed Muizenberg Corner in the winter. Later,
once John began designing big wave guns, they also
ventured out at Sunset, ushering in the era of big wave
riding in Cape Town.
Everyone agrees without question that John Whitmore
was the leader. By then he had also started becoming
known as the “Oom,” no doubt partly due to his place in
the Paarman/Krause/Whitmore family dynasty, but also
due to his position as alpha male and mentor, looked
up to by everyone, from the original crew to the next
generation, which included wide-eyed grems such as
Donald and Johnny Paarman. “I lost my father in ’56
and John became like my father,” says Meneses of the
Oom’s positive influence. “He was the only one who had
a car,” adds Earl, “so we went where he went.”
Going Coastal John’s inquisitive nature, logistical brain
and access to suitable transport through his day job as
a VW salesman at Motors WP, then led him to explore
the coast north and east of Cape Town for surf. “I sat
with the map of SA,” recalls Oom in the recording. “I
could see that every point on the east coast is a right
and every one on the west a left as a result of the swell
direction.” John and his crew found and first surfed at
Elands Bay in 1957. Though this fact is disputed by
some sources who put it much later, this is confirmed
by John himself a number of times (notably on the
family tape, as well as an earlier video interview footage
shot by Deon Bing) and is backed up by Krause, who
was there. “It was breaking at about four foot. It was
perfect, absolutely perfect,” he remembers.
During this time there was no West Coast Road
(R27) so to get to Elands they had to drive on the N7
via Piketberg. In fact, that first trip they travelled up to
Strandfontein and then made their way back down south
via Lamberts Bay, and then down to Elands. Driving up
the same inland highway today, you can still catch
glimpses of the old narrow tar road and imagine all of
them (including Patty, Thelma and John’s legendary bull
terrier, Honey, who went everywhere with him), boards
piled on the roof, crammed into John’s Kombi, chugging
along with an air of excitement and anticipation. John
eventually explored most of die weskus from Big Bay to
the Skeleton coast, discovering scores of spots regularly
surfed today.
Driving to E-Bay and beyond on the rutted dirt roads
was a major mission, so the crew camped far more often
at the much closer main beach at Yzerfontien, where a
passable left broke off the headland. As they had to also
access it via the N7 and go through the town, they had
legendary opskops at the Darling Hotel. Patty recalls
that after one such big party, the hotel owners came
to ask John’s wife, Thelma, to remove him from their
kitchen. “John was not a big drinker,” she says, “but
this particular night he had a bit too much and lost his
way. When Thelma found him he was curled up on top
of the warm stove and in his arms he held a huge teddy
bear he had found somewhere. He took a while to live
that down. The next morning all the surfers, plus all the
residents of Darling, drove down to Yzerfontien to watch
the surfing. They had never seen anything like it.”
John Whitmore was the first person to own a Kombi
in South Africa and invented the solid roof racks they
all later featured, so he could strap boards onto them.
Thanks to his job at VW, John also began to travel frequently to the factory in
Port Elizabeth in the late ‘50s. On these trips he was able to sweet talk the
farmers in his fluent Afrikaans and suss out all the surf potential along the east
coast, from Gansbaai to Jongensbaai, Vic Bay, Mossels, to Buffalo Bay and
Plettenberg Bay among others, as well as eventually St Francis, Seal Point and
Jeffreys Bay (though he was not the first to surf the latter). John himself loved
what is now known as Buffels Bay so much he almost bought a farm there.
“When we first surfed it, it was really working, ‘No. 3,’ 15 foot giant waves,”
he said. “But I got creamed, I hit the bottom, I thought it was a shark that bit
me and I screamed. I got cut up, but that’s part of the game...”
Meeting Metz John’s discoveries on the east coast were, for a couple of years,
only surfed by the most adventurous Cape Town and Durban surfers. However,
in late 1959, an encounter that John later called “pre-ordained,” would
change that. It would also propel John into the most current developments
in surfboard shaping, and have a profound long-term effect on the fledgling
South African surfing scene. In 1958, Dick Metz, a tall, enigmatic character
from the surfing town of Laguna Beach in Southern California, embarked on a
trip around the world to Tahiti, Australia and East Africa. Though he’d surfed in
the first two locations, he was unaware of any waves in Africa and had come
here merely to observe game and tribesmen. In Tanganyika, he cadged a lift
from a South African guy he met there. Dick had originally intended to stop
in Vic Falls, but as they passed through there at night, he asked the traveler
where he was going and, on a whim, he decided to push on with him to his
final destination, Cape Town.
After a week long trek, Dick then found himself dropped near Glen Beach
and eventually standing at the rock watching some goofyfooter, who would
end up a lifelong friend, trying to surf tiny waves. “It was a chance decision,”
says Dick, “and this is what John and I laughed about, talked about so many
times, every time we got together... because there were so many things that,
if they had never happened, we would have never connected.” Metz recalls
how, after months in the bush, he looked pretty feral. “John lost his board
because there was no leash on it and I grabbed it... and I said something
like, ‘this is probably the ugliest surfboard I have ever seen’ and he got a little
indignant and said, ‘well what the hell do you know about surfboards?’ and I
said, ‘obviously I know more than you do because this thing really stinks,’ and
he and I both started laughing...”
Turns out Dick Metz was part of the ‘Dana Point Mafia’, one of the most influential
groups of surfers in US surfing, including Hobie Alter, Bruce Brown, Gordon
‘Grubby’ Clark, John Severson, Tom Morey and Flippy and Walter Hoffman.
John invited Dick to the bungalow where a huge party ensued and he crashed
on the couch for many months. Despite sharing the house with her mom, Dick
dated Patty, and surfed all over the peninsula and west coast with John and
the Bakoven boys, and literally became one of the family.
Upon his departure, Dick promised to send John some Clark Foam blanks
and information on all the latest surfboard technology. He then went to Durban
where John, who had already delivered styrene boards there, put him in touch
with the likes of Baron Stander. Another Durbanite, Harry Bold, then travelled
to the US in 1960, brought back an ‘Ole’ surfboard, and in a meeting arranged
by Metz (who says John and he mostly corresponded through letters between
Dick’s teacher mom, Edna May, and John’s wife, Thelma), caught a freighter
to Cape Town. “John was waiting for me on the dock,” says Bold. “The big
focus was, of course, the new board... It was the first polyurethane board to
reach the country, and had a beautiful shape and polished finish.”
John was able to take measurements and his styrene shapes improved
vastly as a result. Thanks to Metz’s contacts, John was subsequently able to
bring in Clark Foam and make the first modern polyurethane boards in South
Africa. He imported Bruce Brown’s film, ‘Waterlogged’ (which showed for nine
sell out weeks, two shows a day, at Cape Town’s Labia theatre and later all
up the east coast), as well as Severson’s new ‘Surfer’ magazine, precipitating
surfing’s first boom in the country. In the early ‘60s, Oom had evolved from a
backyard shaper to making boards part-time in a small factory in Venken Lane
in the city bowl, but recalled how in 1963 “the explosion forced me to give
up my job as sales manager at VW and become a full time surfboard man.”
He then quickly moved into bigger premises in 133 Buitengracht Street and
Whitmore Surfboards became a proliferate enterprise.
At the end of that year, Brown arrived with Robert August and Mike Hynson
to film ‘The Endless Summer.’ The Oom met them at the airport and took
them back to Bakoven. As we know from the movie, with all the local surfers
in the VWs (most of them sold by John, who often did a double deal for a
board and a car), he took them to places such as Long Beach, which was now
being surfed regularly. Formerly named Gifkommetjie, this was so renamed,
as John told it, when Robert August then gave him a jacket emblazoned with
a logo from the Long Beach Surf Club in California. John then organised for
his old pal, Terrence Bullen, to take them up the east coast, where they lucked
into an east swell at St. Francis and the legend of Bruce’s Beauties was born
(John and others had of course surfed the reef at Hulett’s farm, but had never
seen the nearby point working). They also enjoyed a short, but fruitful stay
in Durban. Brown’s trip, immortalised in celluloid, exposed to thousands of
surfers around the world the great waves of South Africa.
Contest Days By 1965 back in Cape Town, John’s factory was in full swing
and was churning out a couple of hundred of boards a year. His diamond
logo was ubiquitous as he had a surf team (and a short-lived skate team), all
decked out in his trademark orange tracksuits, and had also begun blowing
Clark Foam blanks and was supplying shapers from as far afield as Durban
with boards and blanks. By then, Safari (run by Graham Hynes and co.) and
Max Wetteland, had graduated to making polyurethane boards. At first they
bought Clark Foam from John, but soon both realised that he couldn’t fill their
quotas fast enough and - especially for Wetteland, as a competitor - that
this wasn’t the best idea. Wetteland began bringing in Walker Foam from the
US, eventually began blowing his own, and rivalry between himself and John
began to increase as they staked their claims on either end of the country.
The sometimes-difficult relationship between these two major players of the industry was mirrored in the surfers themselves. The mellow, gregarious
Capetonian and individualistic, amped Durbanite surfers (with the EL and PE
guys somewhere in between), approached the sport in quite different ways,
and by the time competitions began in earnest, things sometimes spilled over
into confrontation. By then, John had been instrumental in forming the Western
Province Surfing Association, in 1964. This was followed the next year by the
South African Surf Riding Association (SASRA), which amalgamated all the
provinces of Natal, Border, EP and WPSA under one body. By most accounts,
it was John, in his capacity as president, who acted as a major peacemaker
during testing times.
As one Oom classic story goes, at a particularly chaotic meeting John lifted
his voice above the cacophony and exclaimed, “Julle kan al gaan kak in die
mielies!” before telling everyone how it was going to be. However, most people
remember John Whitmore, the surf administrator, as being level headed and
fair. Indeed, his influence in the development of South African amateur surfing
is arguably unmatched, bar the later contributions of perhaps Cliff Honeysett,
Basil Lomberg, Ernie Tomson and Graham Hynes. “He was always on top of
it,” remembers good friend Hynsie. “He would sit and listen and then he would
give everybody a good chance to talk and discuss things and then he would
pick up the good things from it.”
The first SA champs, organised by the Oom and his WP committee, were
held at Long Beach in Cape Town and won by Natal’s wunderkind, George
Thomopolous (who won a trophy in the form of a miniature laminate foam
board atop a carved wooden Cape peninsula, hand made by the Oom). The
next year SASRA, with John as its president, held its first SA champs in
Durban, in solid waves at Ansteys Beach on the Bluff. Oom, proving he was as
capable in the water as he was in the shaping bay or behind a megaphone,
won the Senior Mens’ (Over 35) division, Donald Paarman took out the Junior
Mens’ and Natal’s Robbie McWade the Mens’. From this event the first full
Springbok surfing team, which included the above two, George T. and Errol
Hickman, among others, was chosen to represent the country at the 1966 ISF
World Championships in San Diego, USA, with John as team manager.
This was John’s first real opportunity to fulfil his dream of going to California,
to see Dick and Bruce again, and to meet all the other Laguna guys.
Sponsorship was an issue, but, thanks in part to John’s fundraising efforts,
they made it. John and the team were suitably awestruck as they got to see all
the legends such as Nat Young, Phil Edwards and Midget Farrelly, and others
most of them had only read or heard about. John himself was stoked to meet
Duke Kahanamoku when he attended the event’s opening ceremony. “That
was magic,” said John of the whole experience.
Unfortunately, the undeveloped team didn’t do that well, but as Thomopolous
remembers it, John never berated them for losing. George recalls, “He would
say, ‘listen, don’t worry about those guys in the water, just go out there and
give it your best shot.’” Thomopolous also remembers the Oom as being
like a rock for the younger team members, instilling in them a respect for
themselves and the green and gold. “I think that was so important for us,”
says George, “because you had an element in surfing that was going the
other way and John drove it very hard that there were certain morals that you
had to stick by... and for that I thank him because I was always kept on the
straight and narrow.”
Under John, the selection process for subsequent Springbok teams became
rigorous, involving a long series of trials, usually in the neutral Eastern and
Southern Cape (as most of the surfers were either from Natal or WP). John
skipped the 1968 ISF world contest in Puerto Rico, but was still involved
on a provincial and national level, and returned as manager and judge for
the 1970 ISF world event at Bells Beach in Australia. This time the team
did better, with Shaun and Michael Tomson making the quarters and semis
respectively. Thomopolous recalls how John’s support again proved to be the
backbone of the young team, who were harassed by the Australian media
about apartheid. “He told us, ‘remember, we are not politicians, we are here
to surf,’” remembers George.
John, through his contacts at VW, organised a Kombi for the team to drive
down from Sydney to Melbourne. At the event, crew from the Hawaiian team,
such as George Downing and Hevs McClelland, with whom John had a great
affinity, helped the SA boys in their rounds at Bells to time the sets in order to
get out unscathed and get good waves. Both George and Shaun Tomson are
convinced that their early preparation and experiences in these teams paved
the way for the future success of South African surfers that endures to this
day. Tomson is unbridled in his affection for John Whitmore. “He always had
a smile on his face, and it always looked liked he was hatching a scheme,
scratching that beard of his,” says Shaun. “He was the life of the party and
just loved to be around people... liked to do good for the sport, it wasn’t like
he was making millions out of it you know, he just loved it.”
Booming Business Nevertheless, back at home, Whitmore Surfboards was
booming and John had to expand his premises. Whilst the Oom was always
the reluctant businessman, he undoubtedly knew how to play the game. “My
dad had a sign on his desk that said the ‘the kak stops here.’ That to me sums
it up,” laughs Sian, his youngest daughter.
“He was an extremely hard man,” agrees Hynsie. “A hard businessman, but I
tell you what, when he had to put his hand in his pocket he put his hand in his
pocket.” To this effect, fellow SA surfing Hall of Famer, Derek Jardine, recalls
a story about how, when he wanted to buy a board for some surfers he had
met in Isreal, the Oom, ever generous, split the cost price with him. “He made
the surfboard for me and I took it with me on my next trip,” say Derek. “To me
that was absolutely fantastic.”
Now travelling frequently to the States, John had also become a de facto
member of the ‘Laguna Mafia.’ Having a similar passion and approach to
surfing, riding dirt bikes, life and the surf industry, John had quickly gained
their trust, both as colleagues and friends. Whilst Dick Metz recalls him
occasionally surfing with them at San Onofre and at Laguna, as well as riding
dirt bikes with Bruce and the likes of Paul Newman in the hills, most of John’s
trips revolved around business.
In his Cape Town factory he also had to employ a number of staff to help
him. One of these was Fish Hoek surfboard shaper, John Reid, who worked
for the Oom from 1963. “I was employed as a glasser and finisher and was
able to develop a technique that met with John’s very high standards,” recalls
Reid. “He was known as ‘The Doyen,’ a name that he hated. At that time
we were producing six or seven boards per week and they sold for between
R95 and R115. His pet hate those days was the telephone. I could hear him
cussing at the top of his voice because he had to stop shaping and go up and
take the call.
“He was the quintessential perfectionist,” continues Reid. “His passion for
his boards extended to actually being choosy who he would sell a board to. I
recall him refusing to build a board for certain people who he believed were
not worthy owners of one of his works of art. It ran through everything he
did. He loved wood carving and would go out of his way to find old wild olive
that he would fashion into all sorts of things like knobs for the gear shift in
his Kombi.”
Whilst the Oom did apparently maintain some level of secrecy regarding
his blank blowing and templates, he was also instrumental in advising a
number of rookie shapers such as Reid, Clive Barbe and Des Sawyer among
others, on how to set themselves up. But the individual he bequeathed most
of his extensive knowledge to was, of course, his favourite nephew, Johnny
Paarman. JP laughs as he recalls how, even at his business peak, the Oom
was always in boardies, slip slops and a surf tee. “The best he ever wore was
a floral shirt with a rope thong, that was Oom Jan” says Paarman. “Everybody
had respect for him... so many guys that Uncle John influenced in some way
in their lives, John has brought them fun, you know. Once at work, we built
about six rockets for Armscor, they would shoot them into the sky, we did all
kinds of things.”
Hobie Mania As a young Bok surfer Under John’s guidance, Johnny Paarman
turned into a competitive machine, narrowly missing a finals berth at the 1972
ISF World Champs in San Diego, before going on to professional success. That
same contest was also significant in John Whitmore’s life, as it was the last
time he appeared as manager for the Springbok team. Even in 1966 (when
he famously put surfing legend Ant van der Heuwel, who they found down and
out in San Diego, on a plane back home to his sick mom), elements within
surfing had begun to annoy John, namely, the the new hippie generation’s
penchant for drugs. Even his own nephew, Donald, admits he got so stoned in
‘66 that he lost his custom Whitmore signature model and, to his regret, from
that day soured relations with his Oom. “He was very anti that stuff,” adds
Johnny. “It upset him tremendously.”
John had always been a diehard proponent of amateur surfing, of competing
for your country, for the blazer and honour. The emergence of the professional
era, as well as the increasing crowds and commercialism in the sport, put
him off. By this stage he was more into riding his dirt bikes in Namibia, so
he barely surfed anymore and had stopped selling boards. However, he was
still knocking out blanks, and had begun to import and then manufacture
bodyboards. But Whitmore was soon able to channel his considerable energy
and forward-thinking entrepreneurial spirit into another new venture: Hobie
Cats. He had already built himself a large outrigger in the late ‘60s, but whilst
in Sydney in 1970, he sailed a Hobie 14, saw the potential and soon secured
the franchise for Africa from Hobie Alter. By the mid ‘70s he was churning out
hundreds of both Hobie 14s and 16s from his Cape Town factory. Thanks to
his experience in the surf world, John became the SA Hobie team manager
and attended world championship events throughout the ‘70s and into the
‘80s in locations such as Tahiti and Hawaii, leading the Saffas to more Hobie
world titles than any other country.
Satisfied Retirement By 1990 John Whitmore had foregone Hobie Cats, and
whilst he retained a small business interest in bodyboards, retired to the house
he built high up in Camps Bay, where he shaped the odd board and dabbled
in creative pursuits, such as knife making and leatherwork (John also painted
and his renditions of Namibian desert scenes adorn the walls of his daughter,
Peta’s, home). In 1992 he reunited with Bruce Brown, who passed through
SA making Endless Summer 2, with Pat O’Connell and Wingnut Weaver. Just
like he had in 1964, John again proved to be a key figure in their success in
scoring waves, as their arrival date – just before a full moon the week after
Easter - was on John’s recommendation. As a result, they scored epic waves
from Elands to Bruce’s for their entire visit. “He had everything all set up,
transportation, places to stay, game reserves, everything you can imagine,”
says Brown, who by then counted John “as close a friend as one could have
from over a long distance.”
In 1974, the Oom had bought a smallholding in Elands Bay as a weekend
retreat and in 1997 he was finally able to move there permanently, after
building a house with help from members of his family. Here he continued to
dabble in his hobbies of leatherwork and making knives, and he was also able
to fulfil his lifelong dream of tilling the earth. As is evident from Bing’s footage
shot around this time, the Oom had become disillusioned with the way the
world had changed, particularly with regards to overpopulation and pollution.
He always used to say how glad he was to have lived when he did and one of
his most famous quotes was, “I’m not going to tell you how it was, I’m telling
you how it is never going to be again!” However, the Oom had come full circle
and was as happy, as he said, “as a pig in you know what.” In his final years
in Elands, the Oom indulged in swimming and sailing in the adjacent river and
even managed to ride his bodyboard at E-bay a few final times, including on
his 70th birthday in 1999, which Metz attended.
In December 2001, after a brief 18-month battle with lung cancer (thanks
to a life-long smoking habit that he stubbornly would not quit, nor would
he accept anything but the most basic medication), John Whitmore died
peacefully on Christmas Eve. In January 2002, John Paarman paddled out
with a kelp wreath in his honour at Glen Beach, a memorial attended by
hundreds of surfers from all around the world. Recalling the Oom’s last days,
Johnny’s normally stoic voice quavers as he recounts how proud the Oom
was of his legacy, “We were already surfing Dungeons and the guys were
surfing bigger waves than they’d ever done and towing and going crazy, and
you know, I was talking to him about how it is nowadays and he had a tear
in his eye.”
Of everything he did, John Whitmore’s favourite pastime was always riding
waves. “It was a wonderful part of my life,” said the Oom at the end of the
family recording, a lump in his scratchy throat. “I was very fortunate to be
ahead of it all and sort of pioneer the thing, it gives me a lot of satisfaction.”
After the ceremony at Glen Beach, the Oom was cremated and scattered at
his farm by his grandsons, Caleb and Shane Bjergfelt, who paddled out on a
Whitmore longboard and laid him to rest in the vlei. Says his daughter Sian,
“his remains have probably gone down to the point by now, but that’s what
he would have wanted.”
John “Oom” Whitmore, gone, but not forgotten. As Shaun Tomson says, “We
all owe him a big wave, wherever he is.”
| |
|
|
|
.jpg "This is a Title")
