Jack O'Neill learned to surf in front of his house in Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz. He caught his first wave on a used surfboard he bought for $40. As he came up from that wave, he imagined Jack O'Neill watching from his house and cheering him on. Over the years, O'Neill developed wetsuits and other surf products that helped grow the sport. However, some old-time surfers disapproved of his commercialization of surfing.

1. 36
Like many who learned how to surf in the Santa Cruz area, I stood up on my first wave directly in front of Jack O’Neill’s house at
38TH Avenue along Pleasure Point. I used it as a lineup marker, in fact, even though I had no idea what that meant at the time. It’s now
the only house remaining along the entire point on the ocean side of East Cliff Drive, as erosion slowly eats away at the shoreline.
I remember the wave clearly—I was riding a 7'10" single-fin Yater circa 1969, the result of a serendipitous garage sale find a friend
of mine had made that summer, buying the board from an unknowing widow for $40. I was far from worthy of such a surfboard then,
but it served me well as I lined up what should have been a sloping, mushy right, only to stomp my feet down awkwardly on the left

2. 37
side of the deck. The board darted back underneath my off-balance frame, and, to my surprise, I zipped along a racy left-hand wall
until the wave collapsed and sent me tumbling, maybe 30 yards in front of O’Neill’s house.
As I came to the surface, giddy and bewildered at the same time, I imagined that O’Neill—eye patch, sly grin, and all—was somehow
watching me from the deck of his house. He could even be quietly cheering me on, I remember thinking, jazzed to witness my first ride.
The rest of that summer and beyond, I would sit on my board and wait for sets, and wonder if he was there in that house...watching,
silently pleased to see me—and so many other surfers before and after me—get stoked in the frigid waters of Northern California.
Jack
O’Neill’s
OdysseyBy Dean LaTourrette
Photography by Mark Gordon
Jack describes 38th Avenue (aka O’Neill’s): “A good little wave...I
sit and space out, see myself on the waves, ride them in my mind.”

4. “To hell with luck. I’ll bring the luck with me.”
—Santiago/Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea
By now most of us are familiar with the Jack story, thanks in
part to an O’Neill marketing machine that has molded the
company’s entire brand identity around the charismatic yet
somewhat elusive founder of the company: experimented with
early versions of closed-cell foam and later neoprene to develop
some of the first surfing wetsuits; opened the world’s first true
“surf shop” on the Great Highway in San Francisco, later moving
the business to Santa Cruz; has created numerous wetsuit and
surf product innovations over the years; wears a cool eye patch
due to an accident involving a surfboard to the face, a look that
has come to symbolize both his and his company’s rebellious
nature; has owned some exceptional toys, including boats, hot
air balloons, and numerous
experimental, difficult-to-
describe air and water craft...
and so on.
But that’s the marketing.
The man himself is a bit more
difficult to pin down. The
image of O’Neill, Inc. has been
carefully crafted around the
literal and symbolic father of
the company, even going so far
as to invite you to “know Jack”
on their corporate website.
Ironically, because of this, I’m
finding it difficult to get to
know Jack, to delineate between
O’Neill the man and O’Neill
the company.
Sipping coffee in O’Neill’s
living room overlooking
Pleasure Point, staring out at
the very peak where I caught
my seminal first wave, I sit
across the table from him and
take my best stabs. He’s looking
as relaxed as ever in his trade-
mark wardrobe: jeans, flip-flops,
and a casually untucked button-down shirt. As we talk, he
stares off into the distance—much like a skipper at the helm—
save for delivering the occasional joke, when he looks directly
at me with a twinkle in his eye, searching for my reaction.
He rattles off a series of quotes that sound vaguely familiar.
I’ve read many of them on the O’Neill website, in articles, even
on some of the O’Neill products themselves: “I was just looking
for a way to stay warm,” and “Things can get all screwed up,
and you jump in the ocean and everything’s all right again.”
Nice sentiments, yes, but surely there’s more to the story than
cold water, curiosity, and luck—than surfing, bonfires, and
good times. I poke and I prod but get gently deflected by his
unwavering optimism.
O’Neill was born in 1923, the son of a fire engine salesman
from Denver. The bulk of his childhood was spent split between
Portland, Oregon, and Southern California, and it was there
that he first discovered the joys of the ocean. “When I was in
grade school I went down to the beach in Santa Monica,” he
says, “and as a little kid I caught some waves bodysurfing. And,
boy, that really got me, to get those rides in the ocean. There
was something about it that really grabbed me.”
His family later moved north to Oregon, where O’Neill
attended the University of Portland. A combination of wander-
lust and patriotism led him to quit school and enlist in the
Navy Air Corps where they shipped him off to, of all places,
Minnesota. “I join the Navy, and they station me in the middle
of the damn country!” he laments. A knee injury led to his
discharge, and coming out of the service his goal was to sail
around the world, only he
didn’t have the funds. An
uncle in New York offered him
a job selling parking meters,
so he went there in hopes of
earning his global passage.
“I only lasted a month, for the
training,” he laughs. “I hated
all the city politics.”
Instead, O’Neill returned
to the West Coast and, after
marrying a Portland girl named
Marjorie Bennett, settled in
San Francisco in 1949. There
he worked a number of jobs,
the most memorable of which
was crab potting out at the
Farallones for what he calls a
crazy Swedish boat captain.
“It was tough out on those
crab pot boats,” he recalls.
“There was only two of us, so
there was only one guy for the
captain to yell at, and that
was me.”
He was, if you’ll pardon
the expression, a jack-of-all-
trades, working a variety of jobs in order to make a buck and
support a family. He himself readily admits he wasn’t the world’s
best worker, jumping from odd job to odd job. “As an employee,
I never did make much money,” says O’Neill today. “God, I
must have had 20 to 30 different jobs over the years. I was a
patternmaker at a shipyard. I sold skylights, aluminum siding,
and fire extinguishers. I worked for the nursery digging holes.
I was a longshoreman in Portland. I was a cargo checker at
the docks. I was even a bicycle messenger boy.”
Ironically, it was O’Neill’s exposure to various businesses
—both ocean- and non-ocean-related—that would serve him
well in his future enterprise. “I got the idea of being in business
for myself in my very first job: selling the Herald Express news-
39
At Steamer’s, circa late ’50s, “I was never what you’d call hot, but I
could paddle well and surf the waves as big as they got around here.”
April 2007. For O’Neill, Inc., Jack’s salty appearance (left) is such that it has
been logo-ized.
O’NEILLCOLLECTION

5. 40
paper in Southern California,”
he says. “I bought them for two
cents and sold them for three. I’d stand out on the road at
Melrose and Fairfax, across from the Farmers’ Market. That
was my territory—in the middle of the street!”
The fishing life augmented with miscellaneous jobs
afforded O’Neill enough free time to bodysurf at Kelly’s Cove
at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, and in 1952 he opened his first
“Surf Shop” (as well as trademarked the name) on the Great
Highway. He would open his second shop in Santa Cruz seven
years later and eventually move the entire operation there.
As I listen to the early portion of O’Neill’s story, it’s clear
to me that he hails from a different era, one of more stoic
demeanor and practiced constraint. He’s as comfortable talking
about tough times as he is going to the dentist, and indeed
getting him to share anything beyond the exuberant surfer’s
fantasy life is like pulling teeth. Instead, he prefers to crack
jokes and flash his patented grin, leaving you to wonder if
anything has ever gone wrong in this man’s life.
O’Neill has in fact faced both personal and professional
tragedy during his career. In 1973 his wife, Marge, died, leaving
him as the primary caregiver for six kids. Raising a family in
Santa Cruz during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, in part as a single
father, came with inherent challenges—particularly within the
raucous surfing community. Drugs and partying were rampant,
and the O’Neill family was hardly immune. But with Jack
O’Neill at the helm, the kids made it through relatively
unscathed. “I think getting exposed to that stuff is part of
growing up as a kid,” says Pat O’Neill, a one-time professional
surfer who now serves as CEO
of O’Neill, Inc. “I mean, during a
certain time period, everyone around us was smoking, snorting,
whatever. As a high school kid, though, I wasn’t out doing a
lot of that stuff, I was really concentrated on surfing.”
Then there were the struggles with the business itself and
the matter of creating an entirely new market from scratch.
“There were definitely very difficult times; that’s why I have
so much respect for Jack,” says Joel Woods, a longtime family
friend and early O’Neill employee. “Here he is going off into
something where people are asking him who he’s going to sell
to once he sells the first ten suits. He’s got six kids to feed and
nothing but a lot of energy to rely on.”
“Jack really bet the ranch that he could pull it off,” says
Pat O’Neill. “We had a couple of really tough years, there’s no
two ways about it. There wasn’t any surf industry back then,
people like Jack created it. You were basically plucking people
off the street to try and get them interested in surfing so you
could get them to buy a board or a wetsuit.”
Despite the challenges, the business did survive and
eventually began to thrive, primarily due to O’Neill’s perse-
verance. “Jack always knew where he wanted to go,” says Woods.
“He’d get this place that he wanted to arrive at, and cast bread
out on the water and see what came back. He’d decide whether
it worked or not, and if it fit into where he wanted to end up,
then he took that in.”
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
—Gautama Buddha,
“The house is alone on the cliff. When first built, it
sold for eighteen-five. I got it in the ’70s for fifty.
My wife didn’t like how high above the rocks it was.”

6. Jack O’Neill is a Buddhist. Not in a practicing, organized religion
sort of way, mind you, but in the way that he lives his life—not
forcing things, gravitating toward his natural interests and
passions, letting things come to him versus constantly chasing
after them. While his home shares hints of the philosophy in
the form of subtle art and a Zen rock garden in front, and he’s
been known to meditate from time to time, it’s more the innate
way he lives his life that characterizes this Zen-like approach. He
makes things look and sound...easy. “I really don’t know that much
about it [Buddhism],” he says, “but I find meditation very relaxing.
I think it helps with concentration and clearing the mind.”
O’Neill’s house is not a mansion—far from it. It’s a
multi-level, ocean-dweller’s dream pad, where Big Sur meets
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Indeed, with water-tight portal
windows and a World War II-era submarine door (bought at
a swap meet) lining a basement level that pushes close to the
high tide line, the lower portion of the home resembles the
Nautilus, and one could almost imagine taking the house for a
day cruise through Monterey Bay.
O’Neill, not unlike Captain Nemo, exudes a rebellious yet
mysterious nature, combined with a strong environmental
ethos. But where Nemo is a cynic and a pessimist, O’Neill is
a steadfast optimist. “I get up in the morning and look out
that porthole and check the surf, the weather, warm up on the
trampoline,” he says enthusiastically (referring to a trampoline
in the center of his house that spans three floors). “I feel really
fortunate to be in as close contact with my children as I am.
All my kids have been involved with the family business, which
is amazing. It’s all worked out very, very well.”
“The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between
his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his
body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion.
He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of
excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether
he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.”
—Zen Buddhist Text
O’Neill is the consummate marketer, a natural businessman
and self-promoter at heart. This has been apparent even from
the early days, with the creative schemes he cooked up to draw
attention to his fledgling businesses. From giant wooden poles
with gas flames on top marking his surf shop, to a fleet of hot
air balloons and “air ships” donning the O’Neill name, to the
Team O’Neill catamaran (now the Odyssey) flying a three-story
O’Neill spinnaker—he’s never been one to shy from publicity.
In fact, if there’s a rub about Jack and his role in the surf
industry, it’s that he’s drawn unwanted attention to surfing in
Northern California, a region that’s notoriously reclusive.
“Jack was always very visible,” says Austin Comstock, an
early attorney for O’Neill and a longtime friend. “He wanted to
be associated with everything to do with the water, so anytime
there was an opportunity for publicity he would be there.” This
type of commercialism didn’t go over well with all surfers,
particularly in the early days. “The old-time surfers around here
came to Santa Cruz when it was an uncrowded frontier,” says
Comstock. “Many of them disapproved of the whole contest
mentality, they thought that was cheesy and corrupted the whole
41

7. 42

8. 43
“Pleasure (above) is a year-round wave, gets up to double overhead in winter. Like everyday things, I sometimes take it for granted. On the
other hand, when I’m someplace else I really miss it.”
Jack with grandkids little Bridget and Connor (left). Their father,
Tim O’Neill, holds a 200-ton license and skippers the Sea Odyssey.
Steam room with Japanese soaking tub (below). “I get up in
the morning, shower, and check the surf through the porthole.”

9. 44
On his Zen sand garden: “We put riprap along the foot of the house, some of the rocks weighed up to ten tons. I got them to drop a few over here.
Everything is carefully composed. I think about how to improve it. One of the top gardeners from the Imperial Palace in Japan gives me advice.”

10. 45
“When I first bought the house the ocean came under it and the bank wouldn’t finance it. I removed the dirt from under the house to make this
room. The house started to shift and I stabilized it with the steel pillars you see here. We have to close the portholes when the surf is big.”

11. activity. Then you had Jack
commercializing and supporting
those contests and supporting his products—it wasn’t unfriendly
—they just didn’t go for that. For them it wasn’t what surfing
was all about, and that was just something Jack had to deal with.”
Of course, considering that when he began his business
there were only a handful of surfers anywhere north of Point
Conception, he was forced to not only promote his company
and its products, but the sport of surfing itself. The way he
figured it, the only way he was going to increase wetsuit sales
was if the total number of cold-
water surfers grew.
“I think there were a lot of people who were just jealous,”
says Bill Hickey, one of the original Kelly’s Cove surfers, who
managed O’Neill’s San Francisco shop in the early ’60s. “Some
of these people, you know, they see somebody like Jack doing
all these things when they themselves aren’t doing anything.
So they come out with all this negative crap, calling O’Neill a
sellout and all that. I mean, somebody had to do it, man. We
were freezing our asses off out there!”
From the O’Neill Archives
Jack helps Chubby Mitchell at Steamer’s, circa ’50s. “This was
Steamer’s before the riprap went in. The down-south guys called
us cliff surfers because we’d jump off. We eventually replaced
the rope with a fire hose to help us get back up.”
Pat skating in front of the first O’Neill shop at Cowell’s Beach,
circa mid-’60s.“We took regular street skates apart and nailed
the wheels to 1"x 6" planks. All the kids hung out there. After
a while they wanted to build a hotel. The mayor said we can’t
close that shop! That’s Boys’ Town!”
Pat and Jack (in Supersuit)
circa late ’70s. “I was doing
hot-air balloon flights where
I needed to survive water
landings, so I sealed the
ankles, wrists, and neck so
it would hold air, installed
a blow-up valve, and I could
sleep all night afloat. It
became the Navy’s official
dive suit.”
“Drew (Kampion) took
this 1970s ad shot of me
holding an original design
that another company was
claiming. Our headline said,
‘We did it first!’”

12. O’Neill also had to deal with surfing’s image problems
at the time, particularly in the rowdy outpost that was Santa
Cruz. “He was trying to become a legitimate Santa Cruz
businessman,” says filmmaker Bruce Brown, who worked
with O’Neill to promote his surf flicks throughout Northern
California. “At the time everybody thought surfers were a
bunch of scumbags. So he was trying to join the Rotary Club
or whatever. When I’d come to visit, he’d always go, ‘Brown,
just shut up. I’m trying to make a good impression here.’”
O’Neill is Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz is O’Neill. As I tag along
with him for lunch in the Capitola area, he’s greeted by friendly
faces and exuberant well-wishers everywhere we go. Most it
seems have worked for him at one time or another, which they
probably have. Everyone appears genuinely stoked to see him
out and about.
Perhaps no other single figure has shaped the town, even
the greater coastal region of Northern California, more than he.
In addition to providing the key to accessing the copious yet
frigid surf of the greater Santa Cruz area, O’Neill set up a
Pat and Jeff
“Kookson”
Gidden
posing for
a ’70s ad.
Family O’Neill: Tim, Bridget, Jack, Pat, Cathi.
Jack about to hit O’Neills, mid-’70s.
At the helm of Marie Celine, a replica 60-foot
coastal schooner, “She was a family boat and
the prettiest for its size. We sailed it as far
as Acapulco.”
PHOTOS:O’NEILLCOLLECTION

13. traditional family-run business with high ethical and environ-
mental standards. The values of the company are reflected
within the community in which it operates, and vice versa.
“Santa Cruz was the best move I ever made,” he says
definitively. “It’s getting awfully crowded, but I still love it here.
I’ve traveled a lot, and the climate here is perfect. The surf
here is really good too, we’ve got so many surfing spots. It’s
changed a lot, of course. It used to be a retirement town, but
then the university moved in, and that changed things.”
O’Neill, Inc., is also one of the very few American surf
companies to thrive outside of the Southern California surf
cartel, both in location and mindset. This is an important
distinction, for it’s allowed the business, from its earliest days
up through the present, to remain innovative and stay largely
focused on functional surf design as opposed to fashion.
The company has also
helped give rise to a thriving
local surf industry, arguably
the densest population of
surf shops and shapers in the
world today. There are at
least 15 retail surf shops within
the roughly five square miles
that make up the Santa Cruz
area, along with dozens of
independent shapers (M-10,
Ward Coffey, Haut, Goin’,
etc.), wetsuit manufacturers
(O’Neill and Hotline), board
manufacturers (Surftech),
numerous surf schools, and
practically any other surf
product manufacturer you
can imagine. For a region
that’s not known as being a
surf industry hub, it houses a
surprising number of surfing-
related businesses.
As I watch various
people’s reactions to O’Neill on the street, I wonder what it
would be like to be the literal and figurative surfing icon that
he’s become. He has always been to me as much a cartoon
character as a living, breathing figure. Such is the power of
marketing, and basing the image of an entire company on a
one-eyed, swashbuckling figure.
And that beard, that beard. From the ’70s to present, it
has become synonymous not only with O’Neill wetsuits, but
with burly, cold-water surfing from Northern California to
the United Kingdom.
“Jack O’Neill is one of the most recognizable faces in
the world,” says Dennis Judson. “You go to the beach and
everybody knows the guy. It’s funny, I helped develop the
symbol with him in the eye patch, and we put it on everything.
You put that graphic anywhere in the world now, and people
know who it is.”
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path.” —Gautama Buddha
O’Neill is a kid at heart, and his youthful energy and natural
curiosity has been at the core of both his business and personal
success. Given this childlike nature, perhaps it’s fitting that he’s
come full circle to found the nonprofit O’Neill Sea Odyssey.
The program, now in its eleventh year, takes fourth through sixth
graders for a cruise in Monterey Bay waters on the O’Neill
catamaran, schooling them on ocean education. The organization
has become his focus and passion, having handed over the reigns
of the for-profit O’Neill enterprise to his children many years
ago, and he speaks about it with great pride.
“It’s such an advantage to have the kids out on the boat,” he
says. “We teach them that the ocean is alive, and you’ve got to
take care of it; that over half
of the world’s oxygen comes
from the ocean, and without
a living ocean, we probably
couldn’t make it. This is a
message that they take home
and tell their parents, and I
think it’s something that will
go on for generations.”
To date the nonprofit has
educated over 32,000 children
on the ocean environment
since its inception in 1996.
And effective? One only need
witness the classes in action,
with dozens of attention-
deficit-challenged school kids
completely engaged for several
hours at a time. Says O’Neill
excitedly, “One time a little girl
actually stood up in class and
said, ‘Today is the happiest
day of my life!’”
This is how Jack O’Neill connects the ride, giving back to
the ocean that has given him so much. As for his seemingly
unassailable status, perhaps deep down we see him living our
own dream, and for that reason we’re careful not to tarnish
it, and in turn the man himself. In our minds, he’s lived the
perfect life, and nobody wants to be the one to spoil the
collective fantasy. Damn it if he wasn’t able to buck the system
and do things his way, on his own terms, and find success in
both the business and surfing worlds—playing in the ocean,
mocking convention along the way. Indeed, “following his bliss,”
to quote Joseph Campbell (and a former O’Neill marketing
slogan). Says Joel Woods, “I was 14 when I went to work for
him, and he gave a kid a job. That’s the legacy that he fostered
—bring the kids up, get them out there, and expose them to
the sea.”
Who wouldn’t want to root for a character like that?
48
With Chinese drum, “I like the sound. I beat on it from time to time.”
(opposite) 1957 Jaguar XK140, “Such a pleasure to be with.”

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