‘Perfect Merc’ McFarlane to be inducted into Hermosa Surfer’s Walk of Fame
John McFarlane with his ’46 Merc and his Velzy board in front of Velzy’s home on Loma Drive. It was the 5th balsa board Velzy had ever shaped. Photo courtesy of Susan McFarlane From the time John McFarlane became a Los Angeles County lifeguard in 1951, until a decade after his retirement 32 years later, whenever he had a vacation or a day off, he surfed To friends who told him his vacations sounded like a busman’s holiday, he said, “That’s because you don’t surf.” McFarlane was never a pro level surfer. “We all wanted to be Phil Edwards or Ricky Irons. But I didn’t have the body for it. Everyone can’t be Mickey Mantle,” he said. Nonetheless, his induction into the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame this Saturday is recognized throughout the surf community as long overdue. Makaha in the early ’50s. John McFarlane, Bing Copeland, Rick Stoner and Mike Bright McFarlane, now 86, and still as lanky and taciturn as in his youth, was the prototypical soul surfer a decade before the term was popularized in the early ‘60s. He and his wife Susan live in a Hermosa walk street house of their own design, 100 feet from the sand. The siding is redwood, stained driftwood gray. Inside, surf photos…
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