By Cal State Long Beach surfing professor Tom Gibbons was 13 years old when he first grabbed a surfboard off the coast of Seal Beach.
He’s been hooked on ocean waters for the rest of his life.
Throughout the six decades after riding his first wave, Gibbons has taught thousands of students over the course of his 46-year career as an educator and left his name etched in Huntington Beach’s Surfing Walk of Fame.
Now, the 71-year-old Gibbons has announced he is retiring at the end of fall semester to pursue other life goals.
“For my 70th birthday, I wanted to row across the channel from Catalina to San Pedro, but I wasn’t quite ready yet,” Gibbons said. “I’ll be working at that, but also [I’m retiring] to spend time with my wife, daughter, grandchildren, my two yellow Labradors … and my adopted home in Catalina.”
Gibbons has taught students at the middle school, high school and university levels. He mainly taught history in schools around Orange County, and in teacher education departments at University of California Los Angeles, National University and CSULB.
Although his academic focus revolved around history, he always found ways to intertwine his passion for surfing culture and education.
In the late ’70s, Gibbons became a founding member of the National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA), which made surfing an official letterman sport in high schools and universities.
With the establishment of the NSSA, surfing athletes tried out to make a team. They were required to maintain a GPA and could get scholarships to pursue their education.
“Surfing had a really negative reputation back then, and we wanted to improve the image of the sport,” he said. “The NSSA’s goal was to create a national team and put the team on a pedestal so that younger surfers could look up to them as role models instead of the negative ‘beach bum’ kind of attitude.”
Gibbons was president of the NSSA for its first two years. Since its establishment, surfing world champions like Andy Irons, Tom Curren and Bobby Martinez have come out of the association, according to the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame website.
Gibbons said after he got the opportunity to teach surfing at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, he worked with the chair of the CSULB kinesiology department to start the university’s surfing program more than 30 years ago.
Melissa Wheeler, Gibbons’ teaching assistant, said she met Gibbons when she took his surfing class in 2006. With Gibbons’ upcoming retirement, she said that CSULB will be losing one of its best professors.
“As much as I’d like to think our relationship is special, I think he has many relationships like mine and his,” Wheeler said. “He’s just that kind of guy. He doesn’t know how to be passive. He’s always caring with all of his students.”
Gibbons said the most important lesson he hopes to leave his surfing students is to maintain respect for the sport, the ocean and the environment.
“I could have retired 10 or 15 years ago but I just love the sport of surfing and the students that I work with,” Gibbons said. “A surfer is a water person and probably more than anything else, I enjoy just being around the water … I’m older now and can’t do anything like I used to, but I still like to row in the ocean — a little salt gets in your blood, I guess.”
