Dr. Surf

Doc and his paddleboard, a classic 1930s Tom Blake hollow-construction design. Photo: Jeff Divine

Dr. Dorian Paskowitz will always be a great man to me. He has devoted his life to surfing as a means to help people understand the true value of health. No one I know has given more of himself in this way than Dorian.

My parents met him in Waikiki back in the mid-1950s when I was a small child. Our family frequented the Queens Surf part of the beach every summer day for years on end. Dorian had a small clinic and ding repair business and was consumed with surfing. I was too young when we met to remember him from those days, but he always remembered me. This was a trait of his character that I grew to find fascinating. He seldom forgot a child he met and with whom he interacted.

Dorian went on to father a large tribe of his own, nine to be exact. They all grew into great, very enthusiastic surfers. The kids, with his help and guidance of course, would go on to open the most successful surf school for youngsters in the history of surfing.

On a trip to Tel Aviv he brought his surfboard and astounded the beach kids with his demonstrations of wave riding. When he left, the surfboard stayed and started their surfing craze. He later helped form the first surfing club in Israel. Today there are many surfers from Israel with world-class skills ripping waves all over the planet.

Dorian often said that Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “Health is more than the mere absence of disease,” would propel him into discovering what health really is. By seeking to understand the meaning of health, he would come to realize the most advanced yet simple medical principle to be found in his fifty years of practicing medicine. Health, Dorian learned, is the presence of a superior state of well-being, a vigor and vitality that must be worked for and earned each and every day.

To achieve this required maintaining a lifestyle based on a correct diet, sufficient exercise, proper rest, recreation, and the right attitudes of mind. This was how he lived his life. Dorian’s long-sought-after understanding of health is the foundation of my own lifestyle.

My wife Toni, son Alex, and I were in San Jose del Cabo one spring break to get a little warmth and sunshine after a long, cold winter in Central Oregon. I was out surfing while Alex frolicked in the shorebreak and Toni soaked up the sun on the beach. When I came in, she said an old guy with a surfboard had passed by and that he looked like someone I would know. She couldn’t tell me any more than that except that she had noticed quite a twinkle in his blue eyes when he had said hello on his way by. We lay on the sand together watching our little boy have a grand time, getting smashed in the shore pound and washed squealing up the beach.

Finally, covered in wet sand, Alex came up to dry off and warm up. We were all sitting happily when Toni said, “Hey, here comes the guy I was telling you about.”

Even with my poor eyesight, in a glance I took in the old beachboy style of carrying his surfboard up on one of his broad shoulders, the generally fit shape, the even tan and lean waist. Memories from as far back as those my son was now forming crystallized in a delighted certainty of recognition.

Sure enough, when he got closer, I could see it was Dorian. Then well into his eighties, he was as fit as I ever remembered him. We greeted each other warmly, as it had been several years since we had last seen each other. He joined us on the sand, and I introduced Dorian to my wife and son. He immediately told Alex that he had met me when I was about the same age as he and doing the same thing, rolling around in the Waikiki shorebreak and loving it.

“No one’s ever too old if he wants to surf, and he’s living proof of it.”

Doc, well into his eighties, comfortably surfing one of his favorite breaks at waikiki Beach. Photo: Art Brewer

He told us he had driven down on his own from California to go surfing; his wife didn’t like the rats at the campground so she had stayed home this trip. I asked him where he was camping, and he said that he usually just stayed in the arroyo, but had made some new friends who were letting him stay in their empty lot next to the arroyo. The lot was safer and more secure.

He then lowered his voice as he said, “These guys are the Mexican Mafia, and they own that new restaurant over there where my camper is.”

We started to turn that way to look when he quickly warned us, “Don’t look over there, they’re watching us, they’re always watching.”

We all dropped our eyes, trying not to look obvious. But now we looked at Dorian with rapt attention. He certainly had piqued our interest. We wanted the whole feast and dessert of this story, as Dorian was a master at storytelling.

“I was eating some lunch in the restaurant when I noticed these guys looking at me; I didn’t know who they were but I could tell they were hombres malos. They were sitting by themselves over in one corner of the place and no one was going near them. Then the waiter came over to me and said that these guys wanted me to join them.

“So I walked over and said, ‘Hola, buenas dias, senors!’

“They asked me to have a seat and if I wanted something to drink.

“I could tell right away which one was El Jefe, their chief. This guy didn’t say a word; one of the other guys did all the talking. The Jefe and some others sat there with dark sunglasses on and just looked at me. The one guy doing all the talking asked me what I did. I told him I had been a doctor for fifty years, but had done a lot of other things too.

“They talked about that in Spanish among themselves, nodding their heads, and then they just sat and looked at me some more. It wasn’t uncomfortable even though they were a scary-looking bunch. I had a feeling these guys were Mexican Mafia. They didn’t seem threatening toward me, they just seemed curious.

“Finally El Jefe took off his dark glasses and looked me right in the eye: ‘Eh gringo, you are el doctor, but I think you have done other things, yes?’ he said to me in his heavily accented English.

“ ‘I have … lots of other things,’ I answered him. He nodded and said something in Spanish to the others who all seemed to agree with him.

“A period of silence passed as they all looked at me until he spoke again: ‘Eh gringo, I look at you and I think maybe you and I are alike. Maybe we have done some of the same things.’

“Well I didn’t know what he meant exactly, but I nodded in agreement with him. There was a little more murmuring among themselves, then more of the piercing looks.

“ ‘Gringo, I think maybe you have killed men, yes?’

“He asked me this with a penetrating look deep into my eyes. If there had been silence before this, now you could hear a pin drop as the others all sat forward in their chairs awaiting my response. I returned the Jefe’s look unwaveringly as I thought about all the patients over the years that I had misdiagnosed and had probably died because of my failings.

“ ‘Yes … yes, I have,’ I answered quite truthfully.

“ ‘I knew this, I knew it,’ he almost shouted, slapping the table with his big hand.

“ ‘I could tell from the first moment I saw you. Eh, amigo, we are the same, you and me.’ He was smiling broadly as were all his men, clapping each other and me on the back, offering me drinks, everyone happy.

“ ‘You are mi amigo, we are brothers, I own this place, these are my people, anything you need here is yours, mi casa, su casa,’ he proclaimed to me and all the others.”

With that, Dorian hoisted himself to his feet, still spry in spite of his advanced age, the twinkle in his eyes more pronounced than ever. He shouldered his longboard, bid us adios with a wink, and headed back to the restaurant where his newfound friends waited for him.

“Isn’t that man too old to surf?” my young son asked as we all watched Dorian head off down the beach with, I might add, a definite spring in his step.

“No he’s not,” I answered, still smiling. “No one’s ever too old if he wants to surf, and he’s living proof of it.”