SURFIN’ SAFARI : Riding a Wave for 11, the Paskowitz Family Always Tries to Squeeze the Most Out of Life

Dorian Paskowitz , 66 , steps out of his camper, rubbing the sleepy, summer sun from his wrinkled eyes. Wearing only faded surf trunks and rubber thongs, Paskowitz climbs the short path to the bluff above San Onofre State Beach.

There, he stares out at the million - dollar view. And there he sees what others do not: a self-styled mission of good will, born of the waves and the waters that storm in his soul.

“I truly believe that if we could somehow bring all (the world’s fighting) people together, in the water, they’d make peace, and maybe become friends riding the waves together,” he says .

For Paskowitz, surfing is a whirl of joy . Since he first fell in love with it at age 16, Paskowitz nurtured it, as if it were a child .

Years later, surfing--and spreading good will with it--became the life for his nine children. And that is where the Paskowitz story really begins.

“When I start a family, I want a house,” said Israel Paskowitz, 24. “Yeah, I want a house. I want to put trees in a yard and have a big kitchen. But I definitely want a house. And stability. I don’t think I’m a part of the regular routine, but I’ve got to have a house.”

Israel will have his house. Being the fourth-born of Dorian’s children--eight boys, one girl--Israel will be the first married, to Danielle Brawner next Saturday.

After the wedding, the couple will move into a tiny, one-bedroom home in Capistrano Beach. The house is an attached add-on to the home of Danielle’s parents, and though quite compact, it is a mansion when compared with the home in which Israel was born and reared.

“Up to 75% of our lives was spent in a compartment 96-inches wide, 78-inches high, and 20-feet long,” Dorian said. “We figured it out. For each child, there was three cubic feet in which to grow up.”

The dimensions that surrounded the childhood of the Paskowitzes was such: a big, blue camper, with white-striped sides, and a large, red PASKOWITZ stenciled over the rear, right tire.

Within the camper, the Paskowitz family roamed more than 300,000 miles from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to Block Island, R.I., to the Mediterranean-splashed shores of Egypt, Israel and Lebanon.

They visited/lived in Waimea, Puako, and Kailua, Hawaii; Galveston, Corpus Christi, and South Padre Island, Tex.; Lantana, Daytona, and Jacksonville, Fla.; Cape Hatteras, N.C.; Florence and Norfolk, Va.--and many more.

Today, many of the Paskowitz children return to a longtime family favorite: San Onofre State Beach, where, for the last 14 summers, they have maintained the Paskowitz Surfing Camp, attended by youths around the world.

They are a family of devoted surfers--including Israel, the world’s No. 1-rated longboard rider--who have been guided by Dorian, a self-styled family doctor who has lived outside the regular routine.

The Paskowitzes traveled their own world, and, no matter what their destination, their direction stayed the same: To live modestly, eat simply and surf where and whenever possible. Years of school, scouts, and Little League were replaced by beaches, surfing and the Paskowitz Surf Team.

“Some of my earliest memories are the feelings I had going somewhere new all the time,” Israel said. “Surfing the East Coast, surfing New Jersey, waking up to the sound of the car starting every morning. I found it all so comfortable, so soothing, being off to somewhere new. It was fantastic for us.”

For the children, David, now 28; Jonathan, 26; Abraham, 25; Israel; Moses, 22; Adam, 21; Salvador-Daniel, 20; Navah, 18; and Joshua-Ben 12; the camper was home sweet home throughout most of their growing years. Only David had experienced an even smaller home--his parents’ 1949 Studebaker, in which he was reared his first two years.

The camper, though designed to sleep four, crowded all nine children among the rear bed, side couch, front seat, table and floor. The twin bed in the overhang above the driver’s seat served as the master suite for Dorian and his wife, Juliette.

On the roof, stacks of up to 20 surfboards announced their arrival. Bolted to the rear bumper, a cage housed Nimrod, the family dog, a huskie-coyote mix.

It was yards away from the camper, in the warm, cool, or sometimes freezing waters, that the children and their father spent most their time, developing their balance and superb water abilities. In the more than 100 surf contests they entered, eight or nine of the top 10 trophies often went home to the camper.

“We blew people away,” Moses said of a 1973 contest on South Padre Island. “The waves were 10-feet or more, and here we were, a bunch of rowdy, little kids, taking on the big local surfers and beating them. They couldn’t believe it.”

Competition was not without sacrifice, however. Dorian insisted that his children expend their extra energies by making friends wherever they go, and passing forth a spirit of good will and brotherhood.

“We were a band of roving, surfing Gypsies,” Abraham said. “But we had a message for everyone we met.”

Often, that message was lost on those who thought, by first and often only impressions, that the Paskowitz clan was nothing but a moving circus, a sorry, uneducated bunch of youths whose parents must be crazy to let them live their lives without the proper environment: a formal education, a house, PTA involvement, Little League.

The facts such as Dorian’s 1946 doctorate degree from Stanford University’s school of medicine and the children’s daily study hours and self-imposed moral disciplines were lost on those with minds too closed to appreciate a close-knit, though nomadic, family life.

“I always knew we were something unique,” Moses said. “We were nine in a shoe box. People called us instacrowd. Sometimes they thought we were just uneducated bums. But my father taught us from his college text books. We were doing algebraic formulas before we were teen-agers. We read everything in sight.”

For money, Dorian accepted many jobs across the U.S. and Mexico with low-income hospitals and clinics. For extra income, he wrote a series of health-related articles for Surfer magazine, stressing the importance of clean, healthy living for surfers both young and old.

It was with these ideals they rode, both wave and highway, to an adventure-filled life.

--1976, Block Island, R.I. Dorian accepted a temporary job with a local hospital. The family moved into a 100-year-old, five-story, 25-room mansion that the hospital allocated them during their stay.

“We learned a great deal about ourselves there,” Juliette said. “Here was this huge mansion, everyone could’ve had almost a half a floor to himself. I remember when we got their, all the kids running around saying ‘This is my room, this is my room.’ But by midnight, everyone had turned on every light in the house, and come down to sleep together in the living room. They were so scared of sleeping without each other.”

--In 1977, Dorian, a devout Jew, brought his family to Israel for the third time, hoping to promote good will through surfing. But riding the waves of Haifia didn’t breed nearly the excitement as experiencing the country’s war-torn atmosphere.

“I was 8 when we went the first time,” Jonathan said. “Bombs were blowing up around us. Once, I picked up a bomb but didn’t know what it was. I took it back to the (military hospital) compound. When my dad saw it, the guards cleared out the whole area. It was always scary.”

--In 1979, in Puako, Hawaii, a tiny village on the northern tip of the Big Island, the family lived in one 24- by 25-foot room, with a wood stove and a natural pool that was filled by the waves crashing 20-feet from their front door. It was here, with a backyard of fresh papaya, mango, guava and tropical flowers, and an ocean-filled front yard of singing humpback whales and reef-formed surf, that the family said they felt closest to paradise. And closest to each other.

Said Dorian: “We had a garden, but we didn’t cut our grass. It’s when you cut the grass that you’re living a normal life.”

Said Jim Hogan, a professional surfer and a family friend of 10 years: “I’d say they had the perfect life style. Watching every sunset and every sunrise and getting the best waves in between--what could be better?”

But not all were satisfied. Rebellions from the children, Dorian said, were predictable, usually starting around the age of 15. And the procedure of mutiny always had a familiar refrain.

“First, they’d make themselves incorrigible,” he said. “They’d plot ways in which to make themselves impossible to live with. They’d start raising hell, telling us off, or hitting the little kids. When they went, they didn’t have any money, or any formal education, but what they had was a remarkable course in survival. They knew how make a sleeping bag into a Marriott double suite. They could transform a Coleman stove into an O’Keefe and Merritt. And then, in time, they came back.”

Said Jonathan, who, at 14, was the youngest to break away: “We were separated from people, we were like the Swiss Family Robinson. If we stayed in a place for more than two months we freaked (in happiness). It was like, hey, we can actually go make friends now. I left at 14. My father gave me a one way plane fare to Israel. I wanted to get out.

“I was the first person to bring a skateboard to Israel. That blew the Israelis away. At first, I stayed under a boat on Frischman Beach. Then I met some body surfers, and told them I’d teach them how to surf if they gave me a place to live. It turned out they owned apartments and were rich. They gave me a job at their Blue Hawaii night club. I didn’t come home until a year later.”

Other camper revolts followed, though each child found many parts of the “real world” much less inviting.

“I found the 40-hour-a-week life hateful,” said Abraham, who, at 18, worked for a year at a Dana Point restaurant. “It ended my career in the (pursuit of the) American way of life. It just didn’t work out for me. My dad had told me that whenever he got confused about life, he turned to the ocean for direction. So I did. I went surfing in Mexico for a while, then came back to put on the first ‘Tribute to the Greats Longboard Classic’ in Malibu. That’s when I began to feel like I was something.”

Along the road, every Paskowitz eventually found their way.

David, who was the oldest to leave at 22, sings with a New York-based hard rock band, Red Archer.

Jonathan is the sales manager and amateur team manager for Astrodeck, a San Clemente-based company that manufactures surfboard traction systems, surf films, and the first-ever series of surf trading cards. He also surfs professionally on the Astrodeck team.

Abraham, who lives with Moses and Salvador-Daniel in San Juan Capistrano, is a promoter for several local surf manufacturing companies, helps run the Paskowitz Surfing Camps with Moses, and organizes professional surfing tournaments.

Israel, who works for a local surfboard manufacturer, recently became the world’s the top-ranked professional long board surfers. He is also studying acting in Hollywood.

Moses, who says he considers himself the “wiz kid of the future,” is studying international marketing on a football scholarship at Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M. In 1985, Moses became the Defensive Player of the Year at Saddleback Community College. Before 1985, Moses played football only on rare occasions on the beach.

Adam, who lives in Corona, is the lead singer with the rock band, Daytona, which is in contract negotiations with a major record producer.

Salvador-Daniel works as a graphic artist, and is designing the first Wave Warriors surfing comic book to be produced by Astrodeck manufacturers. With his aunt’s help, he plans to study art at the University of Texas next year.

Navah, who shares a house with Adam, sings backup vocal with Daytona and plans to go to college to pursue fashion design.

Joshua-Ben lives with his parents in the barrios of Acapulco, Mexico. There, he helps his mother while his father practices medicine with a local clinic. Like his brother Salvador, Joshua has an exceptional talent for drawing, and hopes to join him and attend high school in Austin.

Juliette, 55, says that, although she and her husband will probably keep moving, there are times when settling down in a stationary home sounds appealing.

“In those early years, with all the kids, I was having so much fun, I never thought about it. But now, I don’t think I would mind a having a microwave.”

Though he says he’s slowed down a bit, Dorian says if he had to do it over again, he’d lead the family down the road one more time.

“People say we live an unconventional life,” he said. “But they’re quite wrong. If people think that unconventional means paying our bills, practicing our faith, obeying the laws of the land, obeying the laws of God, having no vices, helping to support a university, re-registering our car every year, and making a living--however meager it may be, then yes, we are unconventional.

“We’re not Bohemians. We’re not renegades. We love the establishment. We love the education system. We believe in fidelity and one American system. We’re against very few things. We never say bad things about Reagan. We don’t say bad things about the (San Onofre nuclear generating) plant, here.

“It was my belief that in order to be with your family, I had to invent a way of life where one could do a minimum of work in order to do a maximum of good. I don’t believe you can have it both ways. You can’t work 40 or 50 or however many hours a week and raise a family. It can’t be done.

“People magazine said I had dropped out of the medical profession. That’s nonsense. I haven’t taken a day off in 43 years. We’ve been working like beavers down in Acapulco’s poor neighborhoods.

“People say we’re against the American system, but it’s just not true. It’s the American system that allows people like us to indulge in their individual philosophies. To be able to be a full-time family without persecution or starving to death.

“There is a motto in surfing that goes: ‘There is a wisdom in the wave, high born and beautiful, for those who would only paddle out.’ You know, I have never been a winner. I’ve never tasted victory. But when I think of all I’ve been able to do, of all I’ve done, I know all you have to do is paddle out. The waves will come to you, just paddle out. And you’ll catch one. The only way to fail is if you just sit on the beach. Sitting on the beach is the greatest sin of all. You must paddle out.

“And that, is the essence of our lives.”

With that, Dorian Paskowitz turns to the ocean, as he and his family have done from their beginning, finding wisdom among the waves, happiness in their roaming home, and then, finally, finding their destinies, somewhere along the road.