Terry was one of the first people I met at Black's in the late 60's when I first started surfing there. He was always smiling in the lineup, and it never hurts to have someone nearby who carries a bang stick in case of sharks! He took me to the ranch once, launched his whaler from the pier at Gaviotas and surfed Rights and Lefts for hours with a minimal crowd. On the way back, we ran into George Greenough on the pier-he was launching his zodiac to go out to San Miguel island. His entire floorboard was a custom made gas tank! Terry will be missed by the surfing community-his knowledge and innovations spawned a number of changes in board design, and his stories were always entertaining. The following is an article that ran in a north county paper and was written by Chris Ahrens.
> I first became aware of Terry Hendrix after he was featured in Surfer Magazine for his radical surfboard design concepts.
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> While my young mind was still unable to grasp the physics involved in Hendrix’s laws and theories, Hendrix, like his namesake, was living in an electronic world, while the rest of us were strumming dulcimers.
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> He was a dedicated surfer, and a physics professor at Scripps, where he influ- enced other brilliant Ph.Ds like big-wave rider and Sealab pioneer, Dr. Ricky Grigg.
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> But guys like Grigg and Hendrix lived in some mytho- logical word to me. That was until the early ‘90s when I ran into Terry at Swami’s.
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> It was a few years prior to online surf reports and if you visited Encinitas Surfboards, you could find Terry’s surf pre- dictions for the week, posted on the shop’s front door.
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> And, to this day, those were the most accurate pre- dictions I ever saw.
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> They were so reliable in part, because Hendrix knew the ocean and surfed hours before most of us got out of bed, riding his kneeboard with a strobe light attached to a helmet so other surfers could see him coming.
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> Hendrix was a knee- boarder whose inventive surf craft had to be seen to be believed.
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> His surfing revolved around maneuverability and speed. A wry sense of humor was displayed through a homemade poster he had taped to his truck where a longboarder was featured along with the words, “Caution, this vehicle makes wide turns.”
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> The earlier I arrived at Swami’s the better chance I had of seeing Terry.
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> I loved talking with him, but must admit he quickly lost me when speaking about the science of surfboard design and hydrodynamics.
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> I am glad I’m not the only one who found myself nod- ding in agreement long after I had ceased to understand his pearls of wisdom.
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> A gentle, generous soul, I think he believed we were all as smart as he was. In my opin- ion, few came close. That never bothered Hendrix; he enjoyed us dumb surfers.
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> Terry’s longtime and equally brilliant friend, Carl Ekstrom, has many wonderful stories about his lifelong buddy.
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> While some of them concern surfing, others do not. One story that tells nearly all you need to know about this genius concerns a “Popular Mechanics” glider contest. The rules were simple: the glider able to stay in the air the longest wins first place. Since there was no specification on how large the glider needed to be, Hendrix simply rubbed two paper towels together, placed the lint on a slide mount, and sent the result in as his entry.
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> By the rules, Hendrix should have won, since those paper fragments will stay in the air forever. That was the Terry I knew, always playing by the rules, while still forging his own path.
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> I got up early enough one morning to hit Swami’s just as Terry was coming up the stairs (it was getting light and he was out of there).
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> The board beneath Terry’s arm caught my eye. Instead of fins there were two foils that looked like spoilers that are placed on racecars attached to the bottom. He asked me if I wanted to try the board, and it looked so extra terrestrial that I declined, let- ting narrow-minded conven- tional wisdom keep me safely on my conventional surf- board.
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> Anyone that surfed Swami’s for any time will miss Terry.
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> He was a quiet legend who always had time to talk surf with anyone interested. He made our lives so much better.
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> A paddle-out memorial will be held at Swami’s for Terry Hendrix June 29 at 10 a.m. All are invited.
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> Only the most hardcore among us will have already memorialized their friend. Like everything Terry Hendrix was ever involved in, this will happen long before most people realize what’s up.
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> Chris Ahrens is a surfer and author of four books on surfing. Email him at
cahrens@coastnewsgroup.com.
