East West Showdown part two

The first day of the contest, Thursday, August 5, 1966, was a beautiful day with small, well formed waves. On the judging stand were Greg Noll, Charlie Keller, Jim “Selby” Goodwin (sales manager at G&S), Mike Howes (New Jersey surf pioneer since the wooden board days), and a few others. The town of Seaside Heights made no bones about the fact that they were using surfing to bring tourists into town during one of the summers slowest times. Surfing was not allowed in Seaside at any other time during the season and certain residents complained about this breach in the rules. Some of the residents really became indignant when they found out that surfers entered in the contest didn’t have to pay the usual beach entry fee. Meanwhile, the Floridians and Californians just couldn’t believe a beach with an admission charge.
Out in the water the waves were host to a wealth of surfing talent.

The contest had been so packed with entries that they’re just wasn’t time to run preliminaries with all the surfers. So in what was an East Coast first and a stroke of genius, contest organizer Jimmy Williams met with Mike Howes, Charlie Keller, and myself the night before to seed some of the surfers into the quarterfinals. We used a very scientific method. Basically, if any of us had ever heard your name before, you got seeded. It didn't matter because the whole scene was really just a backdrop for the big showdown between Catri's Surfboards Hawaii team and Dewey and his team or more precisely, the East Coast own surf star, Florida’s Gary Propper, and Weber himself.

In the junior men’s finals on Friday there was a hint of the drama that was to come in the men’s finals here and culminate at Virginia Beach’s ECSC a couple of days later. While the west coast had sent some of its hottest surfers, Ricky Ryan of G&S and Bobby Michel of the Weber team, for example, it was Lavalette surfer Dennis Doyle who walked away with first place. In an exciting "wave of the day" situation, Dennis picked up a 3 footer that peeled perfectly with just a hint of West wind holding the wall. Dennis walked to the nose of his 9‘4“ Greg Noll black Cat, stretched a cheater five and held it for seven seconds while the wave zipped perfectly across the sandbar. Some complained that the perfect score awarded by Judge Mike Howes was too much but, nevertheless, it held and was enough to put Dennis over the top. East beat west, but this would be an anti-climax to what was to come.
During the pre-lims in the senior men’s (remember there were only senior and junior men’s divisions at this time. No boys, masters, etc.), it was a close race between Dewey Weber and Gary Propper and the buzz went through the crowd that it was entirely possible that the young kid from Florida could actually defeat the Little Man on Wheels. “Dewey was only operating at 90%,” reminisces Propper more than 30 years later. “It had been almost 10 years since he first made his reputation at Malibu, but he was the star. The one to beat.“

In the finals, however, something happened. Gary and Dick Catri were the only east coasters in the eight man final, while Dewey was joined by team members, Jo Jo Perrin, Porkchop Barron, Tom Lonardo, and Jamie Budge (who had won the contest the year before), plus there was Denny Waller, a Malibu surfer riding for Dave Sweet.

“Catri and I had talked about it,“ recalls Gary. “There was no interference rule like they have today. We knew the Californians would try a blocking maneuver."

"I told him he’d just have to power and hog the waves and I’d do what I could,” says Catri. “We didn’t know what the judges would say. There were no rules for waive possession. If a guy dropped in front of you and you pushed him off they might call interference on you, not the guy who dropped in. It was more of a sportsmanship thing.”

The resulting contest report from Surfing East Magazine said, “during the pre-lims it was a close race between Dewey Weber and Gary Propper. The finals, however, were a different story… Trailing by 18 points… Dewey made his charge and overtook Propper who dropped to fourth behind Bob “Porkchop” Barron, Second, and Danny Waller, third. Dick Catri and Tom Leonardo tied for fifth.”

The Magazine had clearly decided to white wash the whole thing and when you look at the magazine with full-page ads for weber surfboards and surfboards Hawaii the reason is evident.

“Things were very political back then,“ muses Propper nonchalantly.

In actuality, whenever Catri or Propper Took off on a wave, one of Dewey's guys took off right next to them. In fact, Propper more than likely had a rider on both sides since it was well known that he could hang 10 in the soup, so if he was to be blocked it had to be totally.

“They blocked me,“ says Propper simply in a recent conversation. “But I went down to Virginia Beach a couple of days later and beat them all.”