John Baker, former lifeguard captain, and Mike Bright, founder of Malibu Divers shop, will be inducted next Sunday in the South Bay city.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
Malibu will make its surfing presence known to the South Bay area in no uncertain terms on Sunday as two local men are inducted into the Surfers’ Walk of Fame on the Hermosa Beach pier.
Joining a small, elite group of surfers will be John Baker, who retired as a captain after some 40 years with the Los Angeles County lifeguards, 13 of them at Surfrider Beach, and Mike “Bones” Bright, champion paddleboarder, volleyball player and diver, who established the Malibu Divers store and lived in Las Flores Canyon for 38 years.
Only four surfers have previously been inducted into the group, all national champions, said Roger Bacon, Walk of Fame impresario, who founded the Surfers Walk of Fame in 2003. Three are women: Mary Kerwin, Linda Benson and Mary Setterholm. George Freeth, legendary Hawaiian surfer who taught surfing in the early 1900s, is the fourth.
Baker, a member of the Malibu Boardriders Surf Club since its inception in 1992, was missing from last weekend’s “Call to the Wall” surf contest, an annual event put on by the Boardriders at Surfrider Beach. “It’s all about providing a day at the beach for the kids from Ronald MacDonald’s Camp Good Times, and I’m really sorry I won’t be there,” he said last week.
The reason he didn’t make it is, ironically, because of surfing. Baker and a group of surfing pals from Malibu just returned from an once-in-a-lifetime visit to Indonesia. It was a 14-day trip and on the 11th day “we had some big surf down there and it took its toll on us,” he said. “I pulled my hamstring and that was it for me. Now I’m laid up and having a heck of a time even walking.”
He admitted it could have been worse, since they were only 800 miles from last week’s earthquake and tsunami.
Baker, who is originally from Hermosa Beach, has had his share of good days, though, and has competed in countless contests since he started surfing at age 10. By 15 he was asked to join the prestigious Hap Jacobs Surf Team. He competed in all the Coalition of Surfing Clubs’ contests up and down the Pacific coast for many years.
As a lifeguard, he entered many national and international lifeguard competitions. He was a member of the Wieland Shield Team of American lifeguards who traveled to Australia to compete against the State of Victoria lifeguards in 1971 and 1973. He then coached the team in 1985 and 1998.
Baker competed in the Judge Irving Taplin Relay Championships 34 times, winning the race 14 times, more than any other lifeguard to this day. He also won many age group, state and national championships in rescue board paddling and dory rowing.
Paddleboarding was Mike Bright’s first big competitive sport. “My award [at Hermosa Pier] is more for my racing surfboards than being a contest surfer,” he said. “John Baker was really good. Most of the surfing folks knew that, but after he moved to Malibu he really improved. One thing I could do was paddle a board faster than anyone in the world for about five years or so.”
Among major races he won or competed in were Diamond Head in 1957, mainland to Catalina in 1956 and ’57, and all local races in California for a five-year period. He also competed in the surfing and lifeguard contests in conjunction with the Melbourne Olympics in Australia in 1956.
“Along with Greg Noll, we introduced modern surfing to the Aussies,” he said, “resulting in the success of world champion surfers like Midget Farly and others.”
Bright’s volleyball career began with winning the first five Manhattan Beach Opens and playing on the national team for the next 12 years. He was selected for three Olympic teams in the beach sport. He has also been named to the Holyoake Volleyball Hall of Fame, on the all-time team for the first 50 years of the USVBA and is in the SCVBA Hall of Fame.
Like Baker, Bright began surfing at Hermosa Beach at an early age, around 1948.
“We started with ironing boards sawed in half,” he said. “We soon discovered that when one of the big guys fell off one of their boards we could pounce on it and have about 30 seconds of madness before they could swim in and shoo us away.”
Thinking back to when he opened his Malibu Divers shop, he said, “In those days, my first love was diving. Usually, every day around noon I would walk across PCH and cut through the creek to the beach and get four lobsters for the day’s protein. I once rolled over on my back under a kelp canopy and took a nap.”
In 1975, while pursuing his favorite activity in a deep dive between Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, Bright got too curious and pushed his limits too far. He got the bends and has been in a wheelchair ever since. This won’t keep him from showing up at the Hermosa Beach Pier Sunday, he said.
Ceremonies will begin with a news conference at the Beach House Hotel, 1400 Strand, Hermosa Beach, at 3 p.m. At the official induction on the beach at 4 p.m., both men will receive replicas of an 18-inch by 12-inch plaque of marine brass, sporting their names, which will remain on the pier.