Anther legend I never knew

Joseph Corbett "Corb" Donohue, Jr. passed to his "great reward" with his family by his side on October 5, 2007, after a 2-year battle with lymphoma. Corb was born in New York City on February 10, 1941, to Mary and Joseph Corbett Donohue, Sr. The family eventually moved to California and found their way to Santa Monica Canyon by the time Corb was 6 years old. He discovered surfing ....... http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article.cfm?id=12327

I'll be 100% honest. I didn't know anything about mr. Donohue until I read this just now. I surf, I'm passionate about surfing, I may have even said hello to him in the water at San-O in the past, but I'm far from being entrenched in the upper echelons of Southern California surf culture. It seems discouraging that so many of the people that are our greatest living assets as surfers are dwindling. These are the pioneers that made what we all take for granted possible and like the rest of the 99% of the surfing community, I know nothing about them. Sure I read the Surfers Journal religiously, I've memorized Endless Summer and whatever other classic movies I can get my hands on, but I've never personally experienced what originaly made surfing the primal, man-with-nature experience that is just pre-packaged and fed to us now.

Very few of my generation/class of surfers really know, much less care about the past. We don't even want to imagine surfing without a wetsuit or leash (I swear I don't wear a rope when I'm on my longboard, unless its kinda big). What these surfers, Doc Ball, Corb, Velzy experienced is something incredible that is really impossible for us now. We're turning a generational corner in the surf industry, I almost wish it was making a U-turn, just so I could experience a little of what the pioneers got to.