Kit Horn CSM Incredible surfer series

1946. Kit Horn stands proudly with his custom shaped Joe Quigg model. “It was 10’6”, weighed 55 pounds and was considered a very light surfboard for those days,” Horn said. As Kit recalled: “Before I discovered surfboards, we kids would run along the beach with a big windsock, fill it full of air, tie it off, then take it out in the ocean to float and bounce around. When I got a bit older, I got this Joe Quigg board that I really loved, but somehow it got away from me.” Kit Horn 1929 - 2010 All-around waterman and passionate surfer Kit Horn, 80, passed away in March 2010 at his home in Leucadia, California, after a several-months-long battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. One of the most quietly respected Californians in the water, Christopher Mason Horn was just a kid when he took up surfing in Santa Monica. He grew up with the sport, hauling cumbersome solid wood boards to the beach, then was among the first wave of young Californians (along with Peter Cole, Buzzy Trent, and Ricky Grigg) to fly to Oahu to test the big Hawaiian surf. It was Horn who introduced Peter Cole to surf in 1944, and just five years later, Kit and Peter were among the first to take on Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz. “The bigger the waves, the better he would surf,” noted Cole. Kit remained a surfer all of his life, even as many of his friends had given up trying to reconcile their style with the latest board designs. Kit was a long-time member of the California Surf Museum, and we would like to share these photos and remembrances from Robert Wald’s article in the August/September 2009 issue of Ocean Magazine. An amazing photograph of talent on the Santa Monica Junior College Surf and Swim team, 1949. Back row, from left: Tommy Zahn, Pete Peterson, Dick Segal, Jack Spargo. Front row: Kit Horn, Robin Grigg (Ricky’s sister and a Malibu surf regular), Mary Ann Hawkins Morrisey (all-around waterwoman and one of the women featured in CSM’s “WOW: Women On Waves” exhibit), and Tom Voight. After Kit broke the National record in the 100-yard individual medley in swimming, sports recruiters got him a scholarship to USC. According to Kit: “Around 1964 I really started getting into surf competition and began by winning the senior division in Peru. I’d travel all over California with my family (wife Gwen, sons Brit and Kirk, daughters Liz and Pam) and enter contests. We had a lot of fun. Then in 1969 I entered the senior division at Huntington Beach U.S. Championships and came in first. It was great to beat out my old pals John Severson and Les Williams.” “Our first boards were huge. It was very hard to learn how to surf back then because the surfboards were basically paddleboards with no fins. All were very heavy planks weighing at least 100 pounds.”

“I always had a great time in the Hawaiian Islands. I’d stay mainly with Peter Cole and sometimes with Ricky Grigg, my old pals from California. We’d surf Sunset a lot because it was Peter’s favorite spot. Much later, in 1969, I had the day of my life at Waimea – 18-20 feet and pumping. I caught every wave I could and probably got some people upset, but I had waited a long time for just the right conditions.” Here are a couple of Malibu Beach Cruisers, in the early 1940s. At left is Bob Simmons’ 1932 Ford roadster, complete with surf rack, and at right is Peter Cole’s 1932 12-cylinder Packard. Care to guess the length and weight of the board in the rumble seat? “From the time I began surfing in 1941 I had ridden a lot of different types of surfboards. After my Quigg board I got a really heavy Simmons board that he had shaped for himself – we called it the ‘Killer Board’ because it practically killed Simmons to surf it. One day I lost it up against the cliffs at Steamer Lane and I thought the board was a goner – heck, it was so heavy it just about demolished the cliffs before I could get to it! After that, Corny Cole and I talked Simmons into making us twin-fins. They were real nice, about 10’6.” We could catch any and everything there at Malibu.”