Oral History Collection

Michael W. Boles was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1954. His family moved near St. Augustine pier in 1967. Michael and his brother, Joe…

Smiley Sturgis is a pastor at Good News Church in St. Augustine. He moved to St. Augustine in 1965, where he started surfing. He discussed local…

Joe Boles is an attorney at law in St. Augustine who served as mayor of the town from 2006-2014. Born in North Carolina, Boles moved in the…

Chris Way came to St. Augustine in second grade. As a pre-teen he began surfing, looking up to older teenaged surfers. He discussed territorialism…

Pat Hamilton was born in Winter Garden. His parents bought a beach house in Crescent Beach when he was five years old. He and his brother began…

A pioneering female surfer from St. Augustine. She discussed the experiences of female surfers, the landscape of St. Augustine Beach in the 1960s,…

Mary K. Shaw and Beth Shaw Masters are the sisters of surfer Hugh Shaw. The sisters started an annual longboard competition, the Hugh Shaw Memorial…

John Walker started surfing in North Carolina and also surfed in Panama. In 1974 his company transferred him from Winston-Salem to Fort Lauderdale.…

Long time friends, Linda Bevilacqua Farber and Nancy Macri, discussed their experiences as female surfers. They also discussed different surf shops,…

Tory Strange is the owner of the Surf Station Surf Shop on Anastasia Island in St. Augustine, Florida. He created the Surf Station’s Surf Report, and…

Vaughn Cochran is one of the first surfers in St. Augustine’s modern era of surfing. He described his memories of surfing in St. Augustine in the…

John Gamble was born in Cuba. After the Cuban Revolution, the Gamble family moved to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Surf movies inspired Gamble to try the…

In 1966, Jeffrey Hollway moved to St. Augustine Beach to teach math at St. Augustine High School. He bought a used surf board and began surfing,…

Ron and Lynn met working at a pancake house in Ormond Beach and married at age seventeen. They moved to St. Augustine in 1989 and opened up North…

Mike Greenwood made custom surfboards under his Greenwood label. He made an agreement with Blue Sky surf shop to sell his boards, where he had a loyal…