Chuck Hasley, founding president of the legendary Windansea Surf Club of La Jolla in the 1960s, which came to be characterized as a "talent-studded surfing frat house," has died. He was 69.
Hasley, owner of a silk screen and embroidery business in La Jolla, died Jan. 2 of injuries suffered in a single-car accident in Pacific Beach. Chris Hasley said his father had just left work when he lost control of his car in the rain and hit a tree.
A former high school basketball coach, Chuck Hasley was known for his organizational skills, sense of humor and for having what his son called "a little bit of the devil in him."
"He was a Pied Piper kind of guy," said Carl Ekstrom, an early member of the Windansea Surf Club. "He was fun to be around, and people were attracted to him."
During its heyday under Hasley's direction in the 1960s, the Windansea Surf Club, which was Hasley's idea, boasted some of the best-known names in surfing, including Hobie Alter, Del Cannon, Mickey Dora, Phil Edwards, Joyce Hoffman, Margo Godfrey, Mickey Munoz and Donald Takayama.
The club and its members won numerous surfing contests. But, according to surf historian Matt Warshaw, the organization that is named after La Jolla's premier surf break was even better known for the hard-partying style and rebellious attitude shared by most of its members.
"There was this really raucous sort of blond-haired, beach-rebel image that surfing had in the early and mid-'60s, and it was very much typified by Windansea," said Warshaw, author of the recently published "The Encyclopedia of Surfing," which includes an entry on Hasley.
Locals who surfed at the Windansea surf break were known as fun-loving rebels long before the Windansea Surf Club was formed, Warshaw said.
A late 1950s surf film made by Greg Noll, for example, captured young Windansea surfers sliding down a storm drain to the beach wearing Nazi uniforms that had been brought home by their World War II veteran fathers.
"By the time the club was formed, it was drawing from that pool of surfers: They really had that Windansea sort of mind-set," Warshaw said.
Hasley was working at the Hobie Surfboard Shop in Pacific Beach when he and several other local surfers began talking about the Malibu Invitational in 1963.
Only the first nine clubs to send in $100 would be accepted into the contest, Hasley later wrote in a club history. "However, in order to participate in the surf contest, you had to be a member of an established surf club."
