GALVESTON — Vic Maceo remembers Leroy Colombo patrolling the beach near 53rd Street.
“He couldn’t yell,” Maceo said, “so when he blew the whistle, he’d pound his chest to get the attention of swimmers who had wandered out too far.”
An attack of spinal meningitis at the age of 7 cost Colombo his hearing. The handicap, though, never slowed him down.
The legendary Galveston lifeguard will be the subject of a display in a surf museum to open in Corpus Christi in early June. While Colombo’s lifeguarding career merited mention in the Guinness Book of World Records, he also was a pioneering surfer. He was among the first to ride surfboards at Galveston beaches.
Maceo, the commander of the sheriff’s department’s beach patrol, said Colombo deserves the recognition. The beach patrol’s annual fund-raiser, a 5K run, bears Colombo’s name.
The beach patrol, in fact, hopes one day to have its own display honoring Galveston lifeguards, and Colombo is at the top of the list. The beach patrol already has a large picture of Colombo on the wall of its offices, and the Colombo family has donated some of his memorabilia.
Colombo’s exploits are legendary.
“I remember a story about him swimming out to the shrimp boats,” Maceo said. “He supposedly picked up 10 pounds of shrimp and did the backstroke back to shore with the shrimp on his chest.”
There’s also the tale of a 10-mile race along the Mississippi River. Colombo was reported to have dislocated a shoulder at the 8-mile mark, and he had to finish the race with one arm. He didn’t win, but then again, neither did another competitor, Johnny Weismuller, a five-time Olympic medalist who went on to fame in the “Tarzan” movies.
The Noon Optimist Club and the city of Galveston erected a plaque in Colombo’s honor not long after his death in 1974.
“In memory of Leroy Colombo,” it said, “a deaf mute who risked his own life repeatedly to save more than a thousand lives from drowning in the waters surrounding Galveston Island.”
Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, who surfed with Colombo as a child living in Galveston during the 1930s, also will be honored at the museum as one of the state’s first surfers. Paskowitz went on to surf all over the world. He took second place in the 1941 Pacific Coast Surf Riding Championships. He also earned a medical degree, established surf schools and wrote a book, among other accomplishments.
Today, Paskowitz is 84 and lives in Hawaii, where he still surfs. Paskowitz plans to attend the museum’s opening.
The Texas Surf Museum will explore surfing’s general history and showcase the Lone Star State’s unique place in that history.
Plans call for the museum to exhibit more than 35 classic boards dating from the early 1960s plus replicas of boards made about 70 years ago. The museum also will feature scores of other pieces of surf memorabilia, much of it rare, including original surf movie posters, surf art, including original pen-and-ink drawings by Rick Griffin and collectable surf music albums.
The museum will display exhibits on pioneering Texas surfers plus top competitors and landmarks along the state’s 367-mile coastline.
Texans Grace Knowles and Tippy Kelly took national titles in the U.S. Surfing Championships in past years.
One section of the museum will focus on longtime Port Aransas surf shop owner Pat Magee, a former state champion. Many of the museum’s artifacts were acquired by Magee over more than 35 years.
Magee is working with friend Brad Lomax, a longtime surfer and Corpus Christi businessman, to put the museum together.
“We have checked out other surf museums around the country, and we believe the Texas Surf Museum will rival any surf museum in the nation and probably even the world,” Lomax said in a news release. “We have a wonderful collection of artifacts.” The museum has thousands of pieces in its collection and is working to acquire still more.
The museum will be a part of Water Street Market, a complex that includes three restaurants and a live music venue owned by Lomax.
Lomax, Magee and Parker are interviewing many of the state’s early surfers for exhibits that will tell the story of how the sport came to the state more than 70 years ago. The museum estimates that the state is now home to 20,000 surfers.
“Most all of the first Texas surfers are still with us,” Magee said in the news release. “We have a great opportunity to learn the complete history of surfing in this part of the world from these folks.”
