Former U.S. Surfing Champion Mark Levy and widely published surf photographer Steve Wilkings will be enshrined on the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame in April, following their selection by a committee of previous inductees.
Levy reeled off a long list of wins and high finishes in the 1970s, and won the U.S. Junior Men’s Surfing Championship in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in 1974. He was named “Best Californian Surfer” in the October 1974 issue of Surfer magazine. The Jacobs “Tiger Tail” surfboard is his signature model.
Levy, a Hermosa native, also finished second in the 32-mile Catalina Classic paddleboard race in 1976, paddled the length of the 1,100-mile California coastline, and paddled the English Channel along with six other members of the South Bay Paddleboard Club.
He participated in adventure paddles at Loch Ness, Manhattan Island, New York, and an ill-fated Florida-to-Cuba relay. Out of the water, Levy finished the Boston Marathon in 2 hours and 48 minutes.
Wilkings was raised in Hermosa where he began capturing memorable images of top surfers, helping to chronicle a golden age of the sport in the 1960s. In the late 60s he moved to Oahu, Hawaii to photograph high-paying surf competitions there.
Wilkings served as a senior staff photographer for Surfer magazine for a decade, and his images have appeared in Time, Life, People, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and Surfers Journal magazines, as well as in numerous books. He developed a camera system to take remote photos surfboard tails, producing the first behind-the-surfer images of tube rides, according to the Encyclopedia of Surfing.
Bronze plaques will be installed upon the city pier to honor Levy and Wilkings as the Walk of Fame’s 2012 inductees.
