Eve Fletcher

A classic image of local Sano legend, Eve Fletcher surfing Makhaha in 1958

A contemporary of Gidget in the mid-1950s, Eve Fletcher was a Disney animator who took to the waves in 1957. 

Soft-spoken, 5'3," Fletcher caught her first wave over 60 years ago (Fletcher was 30 before she ever paddled out).

An East Coaster by birth, Fletcher moved with her family to the San Fernando Valley at age 10, where she became an avid swimmer when her parents joined the local country club. Later, she took a job in Disney's Ink & Paint department, where she contributed to films like Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. Fletcher was an animation supervisor for the company (where she continued to work through the 1989 feature The Little Mermaid before receiving the Animation Guild's Golden Award in 2005) when, at age 30, she finally ventured down to the San Onofre shore. Toting her first surfboard-a gift from actor Johnny Sheffield (who played Boy in several Tarzan films), she happened to meet the most famous surfer of the time, Marge Calhoun. When Fletcher asked her for advice, Calhoun's reply was, "You just paddle and then stand up!"

Fletcher took to the water in no time. After a year, she cashed in her vacation time and packed up for a month-long Hawaiian "surf-ari" with Calhoun. Back in California, she was a member of the San Onofre Surf Club, and a familiar face on the beaches of Malibu and Rincon. She was among the many senior surfers to be featured in the documentary Surfing For Life.

(Excerpt from The Bluegrass Special, August 2011)