So last Monday my friend Greg Shannon is cleaning out his shed in preparation for his transfer to PR and he asks me if I wanted an old board that he's had stored in there. Of course, I am never one to turn down giving an old board a new home, so I volunteered to take it off his hands. The years have not been all that good to her but its still pretty cool to just see any of these old boards and wonder about its life's story. The wax on the deck was black and hard as a rock, but underneath you could see some pretty neat pin line work and a name. After a little effort I uncovered the logo and pin lines but I did not recognize the name "D. Doyle". Although, with the Lavalette surfing permit stickers on the bottom, figured it had to be a NJ native. Ironically, I was watching Bill Yerkes Summer of 67 surf movie (on loan from Roach) last night and up pops a young surfer named Dennis Doyle surfing in, of all places, Lavalette. How cool is that, find an old board, have no idea who shaped it but pretty sure of its origin, and a few days later it seems the answer presents itself in a grainy 1960s surf film.
ALOHA
Dennis Doyle was a great surfer form Lavallette in the 1960s/70s. His dad was an early NJ surfer who sold G&S surfboards. Dennis shaped under his "Home" label and sold the boards in his/his dads shop in Lavallette which was bought by Peter Poe and renamed Surfers Union. Dennis went to college in San Diego I believe and earned a degree in law. He stood out in the surf scene there and won a major surfing contest. There is much more his story and all the surfers of that era, Peter Poe, Joe Costaldo, Zeb, and Pete Matlaga to name a few . His boards can still be found around the Lavallette area.
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