THE 18-year-old surfer girl with the sun-bleached hair is breathing heavily and turning bright red as she approaches her idol, a diminutive grandmother who is signing books after a lecture on surfing history at UC San Diego.
Tears well up in the girl's eyes when she comes face to face with Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the plucky surfing icon known to the world as "Gidget."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday June 20, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
The original "Gidget": An article in Saturday's Calendar about Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the woman who inspired the "Gidget" books, movies and TV series, reported that she spoke before a group at UC San Diego. She spoke at the University of San Diego. The article identified the person who invited her as Jerome Lynne Hall, an anthropology professor at UC San Diego. He is a professor at the University of San Diego.
"You are my hero," the girl stammers.
Zuckerman has been bouncing around the country lately, making public appearances at surfing museum openings, surfing contests and beach festivals. But this is the first time she can recall anyone getting emotional at meeting her.
Minutes earlier, Zuckerman was bubbling with enthusiasm before an audience of 50 or so, including rosy-cheeked college kids and gray-haired surfers in Hawaiian shirts. She pranced among the blown-up photos that chronicled her life. There she is with Sandra Dee. That's her on a surfboard in Malibu. Here she is with her father reading the "Gidget" book.
But when the sobbing surfer girl calls her a hero, Zuckerman is dumbfounded. Gidget a hero?
To the outside world, she was that sassy teenager whose fun-loving exploits in Malibu 50 years ago were the basis of the "Gidget" books, movies and TV shows. To the surfing world, she was the novice wave rider who exposed surfing's subculture to America's mainstream. And to a handful of purists, she was the reason California's best surfing spots have been overrun by pushy kooks and annoying wannabes.
What's all this hero talk?
Her first ride
It's the summer of 1956 and a spunky 15-year-old tomboy from Brentwood wanders along the beach in Malibu when she comes upon a group of sun-baked men in cutoff jeans, hanging around a rickety shack made out of palm fronds and driftwood.
She asks if she can borrow one of the balsa-wood surfboards that lean against the shack. She never surfed before but is eager to try. The men consider this short-haired pixie and agree to loan her a board in exchange for her lunch, two peanut butter-and-radish sandwiches.
Later, when she returns from the surf, one of the surfers calls her "Gidget," a fusion of "girl" and "midget." The girl doesn't protest. It means she is accepted into the gang of surfers with names like Moondoggie, Bubblehead and Beetle. She was the Gidget.
At home, she spills her excitement onto the pages of her diary:
\o7June 24th, 1956.
\f7\o7Dear Diary:
