Beach people passings 2015
Bob Bergstrom in the late 1940s on the beach in Hermosa with a balsa board he shaped in his garage. Photos courtesy of the Bergstrom family
‘Beach Captain’ Bob Bergstrom
Bob “Beach Captain” Bergstrom passed away in August at his Hermosa Beach walk street home, one week after celebrating his 88th birthday with friends by performing “Happy Birthday” on his ukulele. The Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame Pioneer inductee earned the title Beach Captain for his leadership role in the beach culture in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. He and fellow Surfers Walk of Fame Inductees built the first California surfboards and catamarans in their garages. From 1972 until 1995 he was the general manager of King Harbor Marine Center.
Darrell Sperber, the owner of Manhattan Beach Toyota, passed away on Jan. 14. Photo courtesy of Manhattan Beach Toyota
Sperber loved cars
Darrell Sperber, owner and manager of Manhattan Beach Toyota, passed away in January, at age 68, from leukemia. Sperber bought a stake in the dealership in 2007 with legendary Denver Bronco quarterback John Elway and moved to Manhattan Beach from Newport Beach the following year. Sperber subsequently acquired sole ownership of the dealership.
He became involved with the Manhattan Beach Rotary, the Chamber of Commerce and Leadership Manhattan Beach. “His life motto was, ‘Give back as much as you take, if not more,’” said his son Bradley. “He was concerned about Manhattan Beach growing, keeping up with the times, but also keeping its charm,” his wife Pamela said.
May invented Tite-Nites
Inventor and political activist Marvin May died in January at age 86, following a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. May owned Hermosa Beach-based Tite-Nites, which manufactured waterbed accessories. Tite-Nites kept bed sheets from slipping off waterbeds. May was active locally in the Hermosa Beach Historical Society and internationally in South East Asia nonprofits.
Tim Ferguson at the Mahattan Beach pier, 2009. Photo by Steve Fisher
‘Fergie’ controlled Marine Street lefts
Manhattan Beach native Tim ‘Fergie’ Ferguson passed away in January, at age 51, from complications relating to Parkinson’s disease. He played volleyball at Mira Costa and El Camino College and was a competitive surfer and accomplished waterman. During the the International Surf Festival he would compete in the pier to pier swim, the pier to pier paddleboard race and the surfing and bodysurfing contests.
“He controlled the left at Marine Street and on big days he was dominant at the Manhattan Beach pier,” neighbor and longtime friend Mike Murphy said.
Elliott was ‘Mayor of Burnout’
David Elliott was known to local surfers as the “Mayor of Burnout” for keeping his beach clean. He lost a year long battle to pancreatic cancer in February, at age 50.
“The Ocean is my church,” Elliott often said. “Surfed hard. Skateboarded hard. Worked hard. But still a nice, soft-hearted guy,” said fellow surfer Billy After being diagnosed, he followed his lifelong dream of visiting the North Shore. Last December, his two sons Joe and Todd took him on a 10 day trip to the mecca of surfing.
Michael Stars co-founder Michael Cohen
Stars co-founded popular fashion brand
Manhattan Beach resident and co-founder of the Michael Stars fashion brand Michael Cohen passed away in March at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. The South Africa native came to America for a business opportunity and to escape the politics, his wife Suzanne Lerner said. He settled on 10th Street in Manhattan Beach in 1977 and never left.
“I think it reminded him of Cape Town. He was definitely a beach guy,” she said.
Fifteen years ago, Cohen and Lerner were walking in downtown Manhattan Beach when they came up with the idea of opening a Michael Stars store. Cohen was passionate about helping the local community, Lerner said, and donated to many local charities.
“He loved Manhattan Beach,” she said. “He loved the town, loved the people.”
Ercoles owner Gary Moore in Redondo Beach in July 1977 with a 26-pound bluefin tuna.
Ercoles owner dies, Ercoles lives on
Gary Moore bought Ercoles in 1972 and devoted himself to not changing a thing until his death at 82 in August. Even in death, Moore made sure to take care of his “bulldog,” as he called Ercoles. He asked his niece Staci Clark, to whom he left the business, to keep Ercoles unchanged. She promised she would.
Harrison Greenberg passed away April 6 at the age of 19.
Greenberg’s promise cut short
Harrison Greenberg passed away in April, at age 19 while vacationing in Thailand. Greenberg was working in China for Skechers, the shoe company founded by his father and grandfather. Greenberg studied management at Loyola Marymount University and loved boating, fishing and new technology.
Grossman was public health advocate
Longtime Hermosa Beach resident Dr. Robert Grossman was a renowned cardiologist and public health advocate and served on the Beach Cities Health District’s board of directors. Grossman died in July from head injuries sustained during a fall. He was 67. He championing the older adult population and nutrition programs that lowered childhood obesity rates. Grossman was a key figure in bringing the Blue Zones public health initiative to the Beach Cities.
Hal Hiner’s pen and ink Santa appeared on Easy Reader’s 1976 holiday cover.
Hiner was Easy Reader founder
Hal Hiner, a founder of Easy Reader in 1970, passed away in July at his home in Yucca Valley from cancer. He was 63. Hiner was a gifted artist who drew the ads and headlines for the early Easy Readers. He also wrote music reviews and drew the popular “Aynsley the Cat” cartoon.
In the late 1980s, he moved with his wife Loreen and children Vanessa and Eben to the desert, where he opened Trailer Trash thrift and antiques and restored post World War II American cars. He also became a leading figure in the desert music scene.
‘Rockstar’ Parks lived on streets
Gary “Rockstar” Parks, a fixture on the Hermosa Beach Strand for over two decades, passed away in August, at age 64. He played a mean guitar and had a beautiful voice. Though stardom eluded him, the nickname “Rockstar” stuck. Parks was homeless from the age of 21 and spent 42 years on the streets. He lived in the bathrooms south of the Hermosa Beach pier and sang for his supper.
Pat Killen helped define and further architecture in the beach cities.
Killen turned architectural tide
Patrick Killen remembered the first time he drove into the South Bay in 1980. “It was like, holy shit, what happened? I mean, is there a fence here that says you can’t practice architecture south of that?” Killen recalled in a 2002 interview. Killen succumbed to Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in August, peacefully at his home, surrounded by family and friends.
Upon arriving in the South Bay, he founded Studio 9one2, named after his Manhattan Beach address. He made his mark with the Shearin House, a modern Strand home that took its cues from the nearby lifeguard towers. Its 78 degree windows and canted “fin wall” running through the middle of its face were bold and unprecedented, but still spoke the local language.
Killen’s subsequent work included an adventurously inventive mixed-use “Beach Pod” building in Hermosa Beach inspired by the iPod, the much-lauded LA Marina Preschool and the 9-11 Memorial in Manhattan Beach. “For me every project represented a new opportunity,” Killen said shortly before a retrospective of his work at the Manhattan Beach Arts Center, last June, when he knew he had only a few months to live.
“There’s no question about it,” Killen said. “I have left nothing on the table. I have lived my life like a Viking.”
Brutsch traveled ‘til the end
Longtime Manhattan Beach resident Tina Brutsch passed away in her home in September, at age 67, surrounded by the people she loved. She and husband Gary had a prominent Beach Cities real estate company. In 2008, she was diagnosed with stage IV uterine cancer and was given six months to live. Over the following seven years, she took her grandchildren to Europe, Costa Rica, and Hawaii.
Fenton was last of PV Surf Club
Fenton “Fent” Scholes, the last surviving member of the Palos Verdes Surf Club, passed away in October, at age 97. David Fichman, the second to last surviving member of the Palos Verdes Surf Club, passed away in January at age 95. He was living in Hawaii. The club was founded in 1935.
Scholes surfed until he was 87. In 2014, he was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame, accompanied by his wife of seven decades, Dixie whom he took tandem surfing at Bluff Cove in Palos Verdes on their first date.
“After we paddled out I asked if she knew how to swim and she said no. I should have known then that she was out to land me,” Scholes said. A paddleout in his memory is planned for Saturday, Jan. 9 at Palos Verdes Bluff Cove.
‘Dr. D’ was local Renaissance man
“He was a math professor who surfed, played volleyball, was a second degree black belt and wrote about jazz for Easy Reader under the name Dr. D. He called us his degenerate friends and we called him Dr. Demento,” Pete Bowman said of his longtime friend Dr. Neil Gretsky.
Gretsky died in September, at age 74, of complications related to dementia. The cause of his death could not be more ironic, friends noted.
Gretsky’s early display of brilliance earned him admission to the prestigious Boston Latin High School and a scholarship to the California Institute of Technology. During his four decades teaching math at the University of California at Riverside, he became one of the campus’s most respected professors. One week, Gretsky might be testifying as a math expert on a Washington D.C. panel headed by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the next week helping his mathematically challenged friends.
A paddleout in celebration of Gretsky’s life will be held on the north side of the Hermosa Beach pier on June 26.
Brookes was original Double Deuce Dangler
Long time Hermosa Beach resident and waterman Thomas “Tommy” Brookes passed away in October, at the age of 74, from lymphoma. His father once said, “It was all over once Tommy had sand between his toes.” Brookes became a member of the 22nd Street Double Deuce Danglers surf club, as well as an All State CIF wrestler at Mira Costa High School. He worked as an electrician at his dad’s Brookes Electric Company in Hermosa Beach before becoming an electrical contractor and starting his own electrical business.
Hugobloom lifeguarded in his ‘70s
Los Angeles County lifeguard Cliff Hugoboom worked the Topaz Street lifeguard until he was 72. He made his final rescue in 1994, at age 77. Hugoboom grabbed a rescue can from a nearby lifeguard truck and joined in the rescue of multiple swimmers. He passed away in September, at age 89.
Al Berrera helped look out for fellow Hermosa homeless.
Barrera lived under pier
Alfonso Barrera Jr., a longtime fixture at the Hermosa pier, was known for his smile. He succumbed to respiratory failure and pneumonia in October, at age 61. Barrera lived beneath the Hermosa Beach Pier.
“My goal is to be a good human being,” he said in a 2012 Easy Reader interview. “Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean your morals are dead. I still believe that you should treat everyone as you want them to treat you. “
Newman was friendly, fearless surfer
Bryan Newman, a fixture in the ocean off Hermosa Beach, passed away in November from a pulmonary embolism at age 55. The Hermosan native excelled when the waves were at their most critical, but shied away from any attention it might bring to him.
“He was proud of being born and raised in Hermosa,” said Tommy Chaffin, Newman’s nephew and the girl’s volleyball coach at Redondo Union. “He had an immense love for this town.”
“He would surf from dawn till 10 a.m., because that’s when the meters began,” his wife Karen said. “In all his years of surfing, I don’t think he ever got a single parking ticket.”
Hogan was waterman’s waterman
Los Angeles County Lifeguard Bob Hogan was one of the South Bay’s lesser known pioneer watermen. But he was revered by those who know the impact he had, not just by founding the Catalina Classic, which kept paddleboard racing alive, but in establishing the South Bay waterman tradition.
Hogan passed away over the Thanksgiving weekend, at age 83, from a fall.
“Bob didn’t like school, but he loved to surf. That was his life. He was a member of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club with Dale Velzy, Bing Copeland, Greg Noll, Tom Rice, Barney Briggs and Jack Wise,” his wife Carol said.
Hogan competed in the Catalina Classic for a final time in 1995, 40 years after founding the race.
A paddleout out in Hogan’s honor is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 2 at the Manhattan Beach pier. ER
The 4-foot-11 Dee Strange with her third generation Hermosa Valley “Strangemites.”
Strange was Teacher of the Century
Helen “Dee” Strange devoted 42 years to teaching Hermosa Beach elementary school students. She passed away peaceful in December, at age 90, in her Hermosa Beach home of 58 years.
Strange was recognized as the “Hermosa Beach Teacher of the Century” by the Hermosa Rotarians in April 2005. Three generations of “Strangemites” followed her exhortations “Onward” and “It’s not the size but the voice.” Strange was 4-foot-11and often said in her next life she would come back as a giraffe.
Memorial Services will be announced after January 1, 2016.