Larry Bertlemann

Lawrence "Larry" Bertlemann was born on August 7, 1955, in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Smithsonian records his full name as Lawrence Kaaua Mehau Bertlemann and describes him as a Native Hawaiian surfer. His father was an auto mechanic and a former Air Force survival instructor, and as a boy Larry spent his time hunting pigs and fishing.

At about 11 he moved to Oahu with his mother. Walking along Waikiki, he saw surfers in the whitewater, rented a board for an hour and refused to come in for the rest of the day. About a month later he found a broken 9'6" longboard in the bushes near home and tried to make a short board from the nose section. A stranger stopped to show him how to fit the fins. Months later he realized it had been the shaper Donald Takayama.

Bertlemann described himself as an eighth-grade graduate. By 12 photographers were taking him around the world to surf, and he joked that he then went to "the Board Institute of Surfing." His real classroom was the row of surf shops between his home and his school near Ala Moana. He stopped in every day at Surfboards Hawaii and Surf Research, watching Sparky and Ben Aipa shape, and later demo-shaped for Greg Noll while Craig Sugihara, the future founder of Town and Country Surf Designs, worked as a glasser.

Under Ben Aipa's coaching, Bertlemann rode the wide, short swallowtail and split-rail stinger boards Aipa developed in the mid-1970s, and he is credited with helping push the swallowtail and with reviving ultra-short twin-fins around 1980. His style was low, springy and explosive: tight top-to-bottom turns in the pocket, cutbacks, 360s and switchfoot moves that looked closer to skateboarding than to the flowing, carving surfing of the day. He studied Super 8 film of his sessions to find shorter lines.

He won the 1973 United States Surfing Championships and the 1974 Duke Kahanamoku Classic, and placed third at the 1972 Pipeline Masters and the 1973 Smirnoff Pro. He finished in the professional top 16 in 1976 and 1979, though judges often did not know how to score his maneuvers. "I surfed for myself and the public, not for five judges," he said.

He dominated the media instead. He appeared in more than 25 surf films and on a record run of magazine covers in the 1970s, and he negotiated his own deals with Pepsi, Toyota, United Airlines and OP, helping create the model of outside sponsorship that later professionals inherited. In his later years he hand shaped custom boards for local and international customers and worked as a graphic artist.

Bertlemann surfed by day and skated at night. When he and Ben Aipa visited the Zephyr surf shop in Santa Monica, the Z-Boys, including Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Shogo Kubo and Bob Biniak, translated his low pivots onto concrete. Their hand-down sliding turn became known as the "Bert," or Bertlemann slide, a move skateboarders still use. The 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys acknowledges his influence on the Zephyr team. A signed Bertlemann prototype deck made for Gravity Skateboards is in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and in 2025 he was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in the 1970s era category.

Bertlemann's cousin was the North Shore surfer Dane Kealoha, who surfed alongside him at Ala Moana. He told interviewers he was paralyzed in 2000 and had to rebuild his mobility, returning to bodysurfing and then slowly to surfing. His family said he is survived by his mother, five sisters, three children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Their names have not been made public.

Bertlemann believed there were no limits on a wave. "Anything is possible," he said of his surfing, and he insisted that surfing should be fun. He was openly ambivalent about competition, arguing that judges could not fairly score maneuvers they had never seen, and he took pride in convincing companies outside surfing to pay surfers to do what they loved. He said every session still took him back to his first wave at Waikiki.

Bertlemann is widely regarded as a forerunner of modern high-performance shortboard surfing and of aerial surfing. SURFER magazine ranked him No. 29 in its list of the 50 greatest surfers of all time, quoting Tom Curren ("I tried to surf like Larry Bertlemann. I just couldn't do it"), Martin Potter ("He is the godfather of high performance surfing") and Kelly Slater ("Bertlemann was the first New Schooler"). His influence on the Z-Boys tied surfing and skateboarding together, and his self-made sponsorship deals helped open professional surfing to mainstream brands.

Winner, United States Surfing Championships (1973). Winner, Duke Kahanamoku Classic (1974). Third, Pipeline Masters (1972) and Smirnoff Pro (1973). Professional top 16 (1976 and 1979). Surfing Walk of Fame, Huntington Beach (2014). Skateboarding Hall of Fame, 1970s era (2025). No. 29 on SURFER magazine's 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time. A signed prototype skate deck held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Some surf purists criticized Bertlemann's showmanship, and the Australian journalist Phil Jarratt wrote in 1979 that he was "a truly gifted surfer" with "an outrageously overblown ego." Surf historians also note legal troubles in the early 2000s, followed by a "Free Bert" campaign among fans and his gradual return to shaping. Details of the case have not been widely reported.

Bertlemann died on October 10, 2026, at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, following complications from a heart attack. He was 71. His family announced the death through Hawaii News Now and said service arrangements would be announced at a later date.