It was tough to get volunteers but we took our production team out to the big island of Hawaii to film this interview with Mike Eaton.
Here is an excerpt from the encyclopedia of surfing on Mike.
“Tireless and unobtrusive surfboard shaper from San Diego, California; best known as a leader of the longboard renaissance in the ’70s and early ’80s. Eaton was born (1934) in New York, New York, raised in Palos Verdes, California, and began surfing at age 14, helped along by seminal surf figure Tom Blake; Eaton used to transport his heavy wooden board to the Palos Verdes Cove using an army stretcher customized with a pair of rear-mounted wagon wheels.
Eton began shaping surfboards in 1955 for wetsuit magnate-to-be Jack O’Neill, out of O’Neill’s San Francisco garage/surf shop. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, Eaton worked as a whale trainer at Marineland, a Palos Verdes ocean animal theme park, and not until 1965 did he become a full-time shaper, working simultaneously for Bing Surfboard and Rick Surfboards, both located in nearby Hermosa Beach.”