Tom Morey, Surfer Who Invented the Boogie Board, Dies at 86
Oct. 22, 2021, New York Times

Thomas Hugh Morey was born on Aug. 15, 1935, in Detroit,
to Howard & Grace Morey. His father was a real estate agent,
his mother a homemaker. A family move to Laguna Beach,
Calif., when Tom was young introduced him to the
Pacific Ocean and surfboarding.

Enrolling at USC, he started as a music major but earned
his bachelor’s in math in 1957. While still in college,
he & a classmate, Bob Tierney, created the Fantopper, a
shapeable, honeycomb paper hat. They sold 100,000 of them
(some to Joan Collins & Red Skelton), & the hat was
featured in a cover story in Parade magazine that posed
the question, “Will paper hats become a fad?”

Morey joined Douglas Aircraft in the late 50s after a
stint in the Army. At Douglas he specialized in composite
materials (which he already knew about from his early
surfboard making) but left several years later to open a
surf shop & build custom surfboards in Ventura, Calif.
He organized the Tom Morey Invitational surfing tournament
in Ventura in 1965; it’s believed to be the sport’s
first prize-money competition.

After the sale of his Boogie Board biz, Morey continued
to work on surfboard innovations while playing drums with
a band at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on Hawaii’s big island.
In 1985, needing money, he moved to Washington State,
where he took a job with Boeing and returned to working
with composite materials.

He moved back to Southern California in 1992 & resumed
making surfboards, including the durable, pillowy Swizzle,
whose core was made of polypropylene foam, the material
inside car bumpers. The Swizzle had some success for
a decade.

“I’m embarrassed it took me 20 years to think of it,” he
told The LA Times in 2000, by which time he was making
surfboards under the 1-letter name Y. “It was like ‘Duh.’”
He continued to surf into his 70s.

In addition to his son Sol, Morey is survived by his wife,
Marchia; 3 other sons, Moon, Sky & Matteson; a daughter,
Melinda; 5 grandkids; & 3 great-grands.

Morey worked on various nonsurfing inventions, including
a football that produced a better spiral, a 3-player
chess game, a sailboat with an adjustable mast & a type
of hovercraft. He also sketched out plans for a water park
called Morey Boogie Land. None of the projects were
commercialized.

“Almost everything has not been invented yet,” Morey told
Sports Illustrated in 1982. “Some people think of one or
two new things in their lifetime. I have the misfortune
of being a fabulous inventor.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/tom-morey-dead.html