Ray Kunze: "I've been old for a very, very long time. There was only a short period in my life when I was young." 

- courtesy of Cynthia Carbone Ward

October 2, 1936 – November 5, 2004

I first met Ray Kunze at Malibu in the early sixties. The last time I saw him was at the Hollister Ranch west of Gaviota. My wife and I were returning from a long, satisfying lunch at a memorable little Mexican cafe in Buellton with my old friend, John Kiewit.

Ray was off duty, but he'd stopped off at the guardhouse to pick up his uniform, and John, who had lived at The Ranch for a number of years, had something he wanted to talk over with him. 

I'd spoken briefly with Ray the last time we visited John and Linda Kiewit a couple of years earlier, but he still looked exactly the same - rugged, healthy and happy. It surprised me learn from his obituary that he was five years older than I was. He always looked five years younger!

After John and he had finished talking business, I joined them for a few minutes. Mostly we discussed New Zealand because Ray wanted to visit Aotearoa sometime soon. Regretfully, he never got the chance ... I would have liked the opportunity to get to know him better.

Requiescat in pace

The following tribute was written for the Santa Barbara Newspress by senior writer, Scott Hadly, and is republished here with his permission.

A life on the waves

Legendary surfer Ray Kunze was a man of passion, principles and loyalty

Santa Barbara Newspress Front Page Article - 11/14/04

By SCOTT HADLY

Hundreds converged on the Hollister Ranch on Saturday to scatter the ashes of Raymond Paul Kunze, a retired firefighter, ranch guard and iconic surf figure known as "The Malibu Enforcer."

In a surf tradition, his friends gathered his ashes and those of his dog, a black Labrador retriever named Ralph who died a few years back, and spread them on the water at Big Drakes, Ray's favorite surf spot.

He died Nov. 5 from complications after a stroke. He was 68.

A big man with a barrel chest and booming voice, he got his ominous nickname from the film director John Milius, who was part of the "Pit Crew" of surfers at Malibu in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

"Ray was already a legend when I got there," said Mr. Milius, who included a character modeled after Ray in his seminal 1978 coming of age surf film "Big Wednesday."

"He was eight years older than me and like a god to a lot of us gremies. He was a tower of a guy, a fireman . . . a great surfer and this really tremendous influence," Mr. Milius said.

"Plus he was the toughest guy on the beach."

This was at a time when surfing was transforming from an almost cult-like fringe sport into a cultural phenomenon, and Malibu was ground zero for the explosion in beach culture. Ray surfed alongside Miki Dora, Lance Carson, Johnny Fain, David "Dewey" Weber and Mickey Munoz, men who were inventing style and performance in the sport.

But unlike that short list of Malibu surfers, people didn't so much want to surf like Ray, Mr. Milius said. They wanted to be him -- a man who seemed unafraid, powerful and full of life. With gesticulating hands and his big white teeth beaming -- dentures because his real teeth had been knocked out by his surfboard -- he would often be seen throwing his whole body into telling a story or a joke.

Surf writer Jeff Chamberlain, who wrote about Ray seven years ago in the Australian magazine "Pacific Longboarder," said when God was handing out testosterone "he doubled up on Ray."

But many of his friends say that Ray's intimidating reputation missed his essence, his sense of humor and love of life.

"Ray was not a fighter, he was a joker," said Kemp Aaberg, a longtime friend and surfer who worked as a lifeguard at Malibu and met Ray in 1959.

MYSTO & PETER PROPORTION 

In Malibu, Ray's size alone stopped fights. He stood about 6 feet 2 inches, but his massive chest and broad shoulders made him appear bigger, Mr. Aaberg said. "He had superficially an ominous presence," he said. "But he would just arrive where people were hassling each other on the beach, and it would just stop."

Mr. Aaberg saw Ray as a kind of big brother for the young surfers at Malibu, helping to guide them and protect them.

"He was the perfect guy to be a fireman, you know someone you knew just would do good by everybody," Mr. Aaberg said. Ray grew up in the South Gate section of Los Angeles on the border with Compton. He inherited his parents' athletic prowess and working-class ethos. His father had been a boxer and his mother a competitive tennis player.

Press photo taken when Ray was a firefighter.

As a boy in the 1940s, he would hop on the bus to Hermosa Beach in the morning and stay there all day, bodysurfing and fishing. In the evening, his dad would pick him up.

Once home, Ray would go out to deliver newspapers, hawk fish he caught at the beach, or sell vegetables the family grew in their garden. He remembered the tough Los Angeles neighborhood as a place where people still had chickens in their back yards.

Then, in 1948, as a 12-year-old, Ray caught his first wave on a surfboard at Dohney. The aging California surf pioneer Lorrin "Whitey" Harrison, a lobster and abalone diver, took him under his wing. A few years later, in 1952, Ray met "Mysto" George Carr, "and it was all over."

He never stopped surfing after that. Mr. Carr, now 73 and living in Pacific Palisades, said the two just hit it off.

They rode waves at Killer Dana, Dohney, Brooks Street in Laguna and Hermosa Beach. And they knew how to have a good time. The two were eager participants in "Hell Week," Newport's version of spring break, and Mr. Carr saw firsthand something that Ray maintained his whole life, his attraction to pretty women.

It was Mr. Carr who dubbed Ray "Peter Proportion."

To this day, a few friends still refer to Ray as "Pete."

As with many surfers at the time, they found their way to Malibu, Mr. Carr said.

It was also Mr. Carr who introduced his friend to the point breaks along the Hollister and Bixby ranches. The two first went there in 1964 on Mr. Carr's boat, surfing Cojo and Government Point.

In later years, Ray became a fixture at the "Ranch," and Big Drakes became his favorite wave. A large matted and framed picture of the break taken during a massive swell in February 1986 hung in Ray's Lompoc home.

During his days surfing Huntington Beach, he used to run into George "The Golden Greek" Stemple. Mr. Stemple, a firefighter, always seemed to have a wad of cash, and Ray figured he should give firefighting a try. He would surf in the morning and then drive to cities across Southern California and apply for firefighting jobs, filling out applications on a typewriter he kept in his car. He was finally hired on at Lynwood, serving during the Watts riots and through the 1960s and 1970s.

FRIENDS AND FAMILY 

During his firefighting years, Ray got married, and the couple had two children, Paul, now 36, and Kim, 34. But the marriage didn't last long.

"My father and mother were just two good people who were not meant to be together," Paul Kunze said.

The divorce led to a long estrangement from his children, one of Ray's few regrets in life, his friends said. His daughter re-established contact with him during her college years, but Paul said it was harder for him.

"I love him and respect him, but I can't say that we were really close," said Paul, who also surfs and at one time was working to become a firefighter. In the past week, as his father's friends have called, Paul Kunze said he has learned more about his father than he ever knew before.

"I knew he was this figure in surfing," his son said.

"I just didn't know how famous he was. I didn't know he was such a large part of surfing culture."

And Paul Kunze said he got another gift of sorts. In his dad's final week of life, as he slipped in and out of a coma, Paul Kunze told him that his sister had a baby girl, Ray's first grandchild. Although Ray couldn't talk, he squeezed tight on his son's hand.

"I think that's one of the most important things for me, that he learned he had a granddaughter, that and that he found God," his son said.

Ray's death hit his friends hard.

Tom Gooch, a former Vandenberg firefighter and surf buddy, said Ray seemed indestructible.

"I hate that he's gone," he said.

"I already miss him terribly. But I can only think he won. He went through life doing what he wanted to do, and surfed all the way to the end."

Along with working at Lynwood, Ray spent a few years working for the Lompoc City Fire Department. He retired from firefighting in 1986 and then took up several different jobs.

At Hollister Ranch, where he had worked off and on for almost 15 years, he became a kind of father figure for some of his co-workers.

"He had such a strong work ethic," said Sean Herzig, the chief of security. Josh Farberow, a 31-year-old surfer who also works security at the Ranch, met him first in Santa Cruz. He said Ray helped him get his job and set an example to live by.

"Ray went hard at life," Mr. Farberow said.

"He used to say, 'If I'm going to work today, I'm going to give 100 percent.' "

He remembers Ray spinning stories about being drafted by the Yankees and playing for a farm team in Mexico, or serving in the Army during the Cuban missile crisis.

"His existence was much more amazing than his legend," Mr. Farberow said.

Ray spent a little time working at El Reno, a Santa Ynez country and western dance club. He and his dog manned the door. He would escort pretty girls into the club for free and, at the end of the night, dance with the waitress, said friend Rick Melvin, who owned the club in the back of the Zaca Creek restaurant.

"Ray was a master of having a good time," Mr. Melvin said. "Ray crammed five lives into one lifetime. I used to say, 'Kunze, I'm riding your wake.' Friend Holly Delaney, owner of the Backdoor Board shop in Solvang, said Ray used to sit on a bench near the shop, read the newspaper and talk to young surfers as they went in. He was like a teenager in a very fit 68-year-old body, she said.

"He taught us how to grow old," Mrs. Delaney said. Throughout his life, Ray kept exploring, surfing Hawaii, Tahiti, Australia, the Caribbean and during the past five years or so started making annual trips to Nova Scotia, where he found a rugged undeveloped coastline with mostly empty waves.

He once said the surf was only part of the attraction of his travels.

"That's the thing in surfing -- not the great waves you ride, but the great friends you make," he said at the time.

"I've made lifelong friends everywhere I've gone, and that's a gift."

Nova Scotia novelist Lesley Choyce remembers running into Ray on the beach at Lawrence Town and striking up a conversation. "I think he liked it here because it reminded him of what California used to be like," Mr. Choyce said.

THE STORY OF LOSS When John Milius first started working on "Big Wednesday" with co-screenwriter Denny Aaberg, he thought about all the characters like Ray who populated the beach. He thought about that fleeting moment in time in Malibu and realized the story wasn't so much about surfing, but about loss -- the loss of friends, the loss of youth and innocence.

A few years ago, Mr. Milius met up with Ray at a party commemorating the movie. They started talking about all the guys who were part of the crew who had died, Mr. Milius said.

They estimated about half were gone, many from hard living or drugs. And he reminded Ray about the day that he dubbed him "The Enforcer."

Mr. Milius and two of his buddies had found a bag of pills and showed it to Ray.

"He became just enraged," Mr. Milius said.

Ray ripped the bag from his hands, heaving it into the ocean. And then, with the veins on his forehead popping and his eyes fixed on them, he pointed at the water and told them, "Now get in the water and go surfing. And don't come back in until dark."

Then he paddled out with the boys and surfed with them.

"Of all those guys we knew in the Pit Crew at Malibu, almost half were dead and almost all of them from drugs, it just was a generation that was hit so hard by drugs," Mr. Milius said.

"No one was killed in Vietnam; people went, but they came back. The fact is that drugs were this immense thing, and Ray literally saved a lot of people from that."

http://www.niceness.org/surf/ray/

http://www.silcom.com/~pordecon/ray.htm