Tom Morey, Surfer Who Invented the Boogie Board, Dies at 86

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Tom Morey, Surfer Who Invented the Boogie Board, Dies at 86

But Mr. Morey did not get prosperous from the Boogie Board. He bought his business sometime in 1977 or 1978 to Kransco, a toy producer, for an undetermined average sum and been given no royalties.

Mr. Morey was philosophical about his missing windfall.

“Say I experienced bought this for a billion pounds,” he instructed The Los Angeles Moments in 2003. “l’m however going to be sitting here in my bathing match. I’m not likely to eat any far more than I’m eating.”

Thomas Hugh Morey was born on Aug. 15, 1935, in Detroit, to Howard and Grace Morey. His father was a true estate agent, his mother a homemaker. A loved ones transfer to Laguna Beach, Calif., when Tom was younger introduced him to the Pacific Ocean and surfboarding.

Enrolling at the University of Southern California, he begun as a tunes important but gained his bachelor’s diploma in mathematics in 1957. While continue to in college, he and a classmate, Bob Tierney, created the Fantopper, a shapeable, honeycomb paper hat. They marketed 100,000 of them (some to Joan Collins and Pink Skelton), and the hat was featured in a protect story in Parade magazine that posed the concern, “Will paper hats turn into a fad?”

Mr. Morey joined Douglas Aircraft in the late 1950s after a stint in the Military. At Douglas he specialised in composite components (which he previously understood about from his early surfboard making) but remaining a number of a long time afterwards to open a surf shop and establish tailor made surfboards in Ventura, Calif. He organized the Tom Morey Invitational browsing match in Ventura in 1965 it is considered to be the sport’s initial prize-revenue level of competition.

Just after the sale of his Boogie Board company, Mr. Morey continued to operate on surfboard improvements though participating in drums with a band at the Mauna Kea Beach front Lodge on Hawaii’s massive island. In 1985, needing funds, he moved to Washington Point out, the place he took a work with Boeing and returned to operating with composite supplies.