Sparky is the first one to help drug addicted or alcoholicSouthBaysurfers get into a program when they visitHawaii. He married his lively wife Linda, had a beautiful daughter Lana and has been sober for over 20 years. But the AA meeting evidently did him some good because this time when he left jail he was clean and sober. Then it was back to jail for pouring a pint of brandy in the AA coffee maker. Sparky took his show on the road to Maui where he wound up in jail after holding up a liquor store and crashing his getaway car into a fire hydrant in the parking lot.Ī condition of his release was that he attend AA, which he did, once. Sparky told me later that it was just Irish luck. I could hear Karen’s mother Daisy screaming in the background. He’s drinking a beer right now on the lawn.” “He asked me if we have any beers in the ice box. “Sparky just drove a car through the den of our house,” she said. I was on an East Coast promotion trip for Jacobs Surfboards when I got woken up by a frantic phone call from Karen Bibee. The friendly advice followed the night he borrowed his girlfriend’s dad’s new Cadillac and drove it into my girlfriend Karen Bibee’s parents’ home on Gould Avenue. He was such a wild party animal that the Hermosa police finally told him leave town or go to jail. And Sparky was one of them, in addition to winning a lot of contests, and being featured in just about every Surfer magazine. Photo by Sixto Caceresĭuring that era, we didn’t have $100,000 surf contests and million dollar sponsorship deals, but we did have the most colorful characters in the history of surfing. “See, I told you not to worry,” Sparky told the stunned Hap. Sparky went on to win the men’s division and I won the junior men’s division. We both threw up in our first heats but still managed to advance. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you guys,” he said. Then, we almost missed our first heat because we were still drunk from partying the night before.
He and I had talked Hap into making us new surfboards for the ’64 Santa Monica Mid Winter Surfing Championships. Sparky and I laughed at Hap’s comment even though we knew he was serious. She had invited all of our old ‘60s crew, including Lance Carson, Henry Ford, John Teague, and photographers Steve Wilking and Bruce Herman, The barbecue was at the Hermosa Beach walk street home where Sparky grew up and where his sister Robyn now lives.
Surfboard shaper Hap Jacobs walked up to Sparky Hudson at the barbecue thrown in Sparky’s honor last month said, “Out of all the people I expected to make it past 60 you would be last on my list.” (Standing) Kenny Brown and his wife, Lance Carson, Bruce Ehlers, Abel Ybarra, Sparky Hudson, Bob Markland, Marie Case, Steve Wilkings, Kiki Folley, Bruce Herman, Griff Houston, Mark Turner, Mike Purpus, Steve Wible, John DeGroot and Tim Elsner.
Sparky Hudson’s ‘60s surf crew (left to right, seated) Karen Kruse, John Teague, Hap Jacobs and Henry Ford.
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