Torrance Airport legend Sy Symons returned from WWII and immersed himself in the two cultures that would come to define the South Bay, aviation and surfing
by Ed Solt
Merlyn “Sy” Symons’ hanger at the Torrance Airport was adorned with war medals and seven decades of photos, antique airplane parts, and tools, all housed around his cherished midnight black 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza V-tail airplane, the only airplane he owned in his 70 years of flying.
“He was one of the most beloved figures at the Torrance airport,” said Dennis Murphy, his friend and hangar neighbor. “He was at his hangar daily until sunset. He didn’t drive in the dark.”
Through his lifetime, Symons owned 33 different cars, starting with a 1931 Ford roadster and ending with a midnight black 1997 Ford Thunderbird. He bought his Thunderbird straight off a showroom floor and only took it back to the dealership once to get serviced.
“His commute for the last twenty or so years consisted of going to the Torrance airport from his home just down the street,” said Murphy.
Symons arrived in the South Bay following his service in WWII in order to go to work for Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo. He spent the rest of his life immersed in the two cultures that would define the South Bay, aviation and surf culture.
Symons died on December 28. He was 97. Earlier that month, he invited the Easy Reader into his beloved hangar, a place of congregation for he and his many friends, an Old Boys club filled with laughter and talk of planes and exotic sports cars. Everyone loved to hear Symons’ stories. His voice had a gruffness that would loosen up after a beer or two.
“If it flies, floats, or f****, rent it,” Symons told his buddies, one of an endless stream of one-liners that kept his crew in stitches until the very end.
Life of Sy
Symons was born on December 29, 1918 in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. His childhood days in Devil’s Lake were filled with hockey and skiing in the winter and swimming and diving in the summer.
“I worked at a pool as a lifeguard in the summer,” Sy said. “ This is where I began my love with water.”
As a kid he recalls sitting by the radio and hearing about Charles Lindbergh’s historic 1935 flight over the Atlantic.
“He was my first hero,” he said. “I began building model airplanes and decided I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly.”
He started flying in 1935 in a Curtiss Robin plane. In 1940, he received his commercial license while attending the University of Washington. While in Washington, in 1942, he received his instruction rating after enrolling in a civilian pilot training for the Naval Reserves flying Waco Biplanes. Eventually, he was called into active duty for the U.S. Navy and reported to basic training in Pensacola, Florida.
“First thing that happened to me was that the enlisting man took me to bunkhouse to make my bunk,” Symons recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘If this is it, oh boy, this is going to be easy.”
For 15 months he worked as a flight instructor in New Orleans training pilots for both theaters of war.
At the time, Symons was angry — he wanted to go to the frontline of the war to help his friends and fellow soldiers. But later in life, he came to feel grateful for his service, crediting it as “the reason I’m still here.”
“There must’ve been an angel watching me,” he said.
Toward the end of the war, he flew bombing missions over Japan. He was one of the first to use torpedo bombers with rocket pods in the Navy.
“We’d shoot rockets into the Japanese caves,” he said.
Sy’s obsession with flying kept him in the service for 14 years. In his military career, he flew “pretty much everything,” including a hundred hours flying DC-3’s, the plane that revolutionized aviation in the late ‘30s and ‘40s. The fastest plane he flew was the Vought F-8 Crusader, a single-engine, supersonic fighter.
“It was a jet, you know. It out flew the P-51 like it was tied down,” he said. “And the P-51 blew the doors off most of the jets early on. It has a lot of muscle.”
In the Korean war, Symons’ squadron flew missions bombing railroad tracks and tunnels.
“The Koreans would use the tunnels during the daytime and the tracks at night,” he said. “We messed up those tunnels.”
Symons was in the Navy until shortly before the United States unofficial involvement in Vietnam began.
“Thank God, I didn’t have to play games with that,” he said.
Summoned to the sea
Symons took to surfing when he was off-duty.
He got his first taste of wave riding in 1945 on a summer road trip from Washington to San Francisco in his hopped up ‘31 Ford Roadster. He was surprised he wasn’t arrested on the trip for his car being so raggedy, loud, and fast.
“A fellow Navy pilot took me out at Seal Rocks. It was really foggy and two seals popped up beside me” he said. “I was hooked. I wanted to find a way to eventually be by the ocean.”
Symons eventually found his chance. After WWII, he came to the South Bay, arriving in El Segundo to work for Douglas Aircraft. Immediately, Symons was engulfed by the surfing lifestyle. He began sliding the gentle breaks of “the Waikiki of the Pacific,” Palos Verdes Cove, on self-shaped redwood blanks weighing up to 80 pounds.
In between wars, Symons caught the surf bug and traveled.
In Hawaii, he surfed Waikiki with the legendary beach boys, including the founder of modern surfing, Duke Kahanamoku, and Rabbit Kekai (still a living surf legend at 95).
“I’d like to go to the North Shore and surf Sunset Beach,” he said.
During the early-to-mid 50s, the surfing community was in its infancy. It was a relatively small, tightknit crew. Symons knew many of the original surf legends, like Velzy, Simmons, or Kilvin, by their first names, Dale, Bob, and Matt.
“Malibu was so uncrowded, I’d pray for somebody to surf with,” he said. “Then, the damn Gidget movie ruin the whole damn thing!”
He built his first home on 31st. Street and Laurel Avenue in Manhattan Beach in 1950.
In the late 60s, Symons was going through a divorce as his “second marriage went to snot.”
“Don’t ever take financial advice from me. I kept the plane and wife took the house,” he said. “The wife sold the house and and then bought a four bedroom rental unit on the Strand…but I got the plane.”
The plane Symons was talking about was his Bonanza. He purchased it in 1947.
“I was drunk New Year’s Day in an Elks Lodge in Rice Lake Wisconsin shooting the shit with a fellow pilot who’s talking about his Bonanza. I told him nobody wants that piece of shit,” Symons said. “Later on, I eventually flew it, when it was only six weeks old, to St. Paul, Minnesota, with three big guys. We were covered in snow. It was a heavy load. I had to have her.”
Symons’ plane offered him a sense of freedom.
“It’s a rare pleasure, all alone, to go wherever you want to go, like birds,” he said. “ You don’t follow anybody else in traffic. It’s a rare pleasure.”
He started Symons Engineering, a business that hand-shaped parts for airplanes. As his own boss, he was happily left to his own devices. He loved to check the surf from San O to Malibu — in his plane.
”If I missed work, the next day I’d have to work double and harder,” Symons said, laughing.
His travels in his Bonanza made him “pretty much a Florida resident for awhile.”
“I could leave here in the morning, and with two stops in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and Shreveport, Louisiana, be in Orlando for happy hour,” he said.
One particular travel Symons loved to talk about was his first trip to New York City. He was staying on 58th Avenue across from Madison Square Garden and decided to “walk down into the city one day to see what was going on.”
“The light turned green for the crosswalk and a cab came around the corner and just about took me out. There was a big fat Irish cop standing out in the middle of there directing traffic. I said to him, ‘Hey did you see that? That guy almost ran me over!’” said Symons, amid much laughter. “The cop said back [Symons switched to a thick Irish accent], ‘Watch out for the cars sonny, the lights won’t hurt you.’ Damn, New York philosophy.”
Hangar lifer
In the late 60s, Symons and a few pilot buddies built the original 56 hangars at the Torrance Airport.
“I kept my Bonanza at the Hawthorne Airport and realized one day, ‘Why am I driving so far?’” Symons said. “I kept one of the hangers and moved in New Year’s Day, 1970. I’ve been here since.”
Sy watched the airport grow, and then decline, especially over the last twenty years.
“There used to be a line of planes trying to land above my apartment on Ocean Boulevard in Torrance and a line on the runway with instructors instructing,” he said. “Now, I am lucky to hear one plane take off a day.”
Symons had only one close encounter in his Bonanza, an encounter that tested his abilities and nerves. His nose-landing gear got stuck and would not lower down. He risked landing with his propeller on the ground, destroying his beloved plane, or worse.
“I noticed it not going down so I flew back over the ocean and tried to shake it down,” he said.
Symons asked the airport tower what runway they wanted him to use. The tower responded back, “Two nine right. And wait until we get the fire trucks going.”
“They cleared me to land. I landed tail low and finally the thing pitched over.” he said. “I’m looking at the concrete listening to my airplane grinding away. When I stopped, I couldn’t get out of the airplane because it was so nose down. Two big fireman had to shake me out.”
After 71 years of being a rated pilot, deteriorating eyesight caused Sy to retire from manning the cockpit. He was 87.
“I would have hated to say I wish I stopped flying sooner. I wouldn’t want to hurt the airplane,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for the medical industry to find the cure for this, the threshold, but they haven’t done it.”
For the last decade of his life, Symons wasn’t completely grounded. His friends took him to the air. He decided to finally hang up his wings when he decided he was dangerous getting in and out of his friends’ airplanes. His Bonanza was “supposedly” on the market.
“I’ve been waiting for someone to buy the airplane,” he said in December. “It has given me a world of pleasure for all this years.”
The relationship between the old man and his airplane was one of caretaker and caretaker, like two old friends looking out for one another.
“At his age, he still takes it out once a month from the hanger and fires her up to keep the Lycoming 6-cylinder oiled and in working condition,” said Murphy. “He’s not selling it. It keeps him going.”
On December 28, Symons was taken to the hospital by friends after complaining of feeling tired after another afternoon of hanging with the boys. He passed away in his sleep overnight. ER
