Joyce Hoffman

Kiki Lamonica was barely a teenager and living in the middle of the country those three years Joyce Hoffman won the U.S. Surfing Championships. Joyce Hoffman was a teenager herself, though a little older.

Hoffman was the first woman in the world to surf Pipeline in Hawaii. She won every major championship she competed in, and she now has a place in every major surfing hall of fame. In a SURFING ILLUSTRATED interview, she said, “I hope to help give surfing the image it deserves. Exactly how I can accomplish this I don’t know, but being named a Woman of the Year (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1965) and getting good grades in school—all of these things help.”

She is, of course, my hero.

Who would have ever guessed a green-eyed licensed psychologist in a small town in Minnesota, a woman whose office is so bright from glare at certain times of day she needs to put on sunglasses, would find her way one three-day trip out west in the life of a surfriding honor student who had become a mom, who had become a grandmom, whose daughter had had a daughter she called Jade, who had grown after a short time to need a babysitter named April Street?

One day, there were the three-and-a-half of us, walking that stretch of beach just north of Shorecliffs. In ripples of sand, we shuffled along, putting the mind, the long stretchy muscles of the body, and the circle of women we all were, back together.