Tom Kennedy Was Born to Bodysurf the Wedge . . . Almost Literally

For Tom (Cashbox) Kennedy, bodysurfing--especially at Newport Beach’s famous Wedge--is more than a dip into an ocean playground. It’s his poetry, this whirling and swirling through blue-green summer swells, the long, steep drops into cool, churning oblivion.

Perhaps, it was something he was born to do.

Twenty-four years ago today, in fact, his mother, nine months pregnant, stood with her husband and three children on the Wedge’s rock jetty, watching the waves roll in.

For some reason, none of the Kennedy family members noticed one particularly huge wave coming toward them. It hit and swept them into the raging surf. After she and her husband pulled their children to safety, Fran Kennedy was struck by her first labor pain.

Twelve hours later, Tom Kennedy was born. His arrival was 14 days earlier than expected.

“We laugh about it now, but the story is real curious, I guess,” Fran Kennedy said. “We think he must have been baptized at the Wedge, right then and there.

“The funny thing is, it’s very strange, but my husband and I didn’t usually go down to the Wedge. As a matter of fact, that was the only time we ever did. . . . “

Call it fate or coincidence, but Kennedy has spent the last nine years learning the secrets of the Wedge, one of the most famous--and often most dangerous--bodysurfing breaks in the world. He is considered by many to be one of the very best.

“He’s developed into one of the top five there, definitely,” said Greg Deets, 32, a Wedge local, known to some as the father of performance, or trick, bodysurfing. “Cashbox is one of the most aggressive bodysurfers in the world. When the waves are real big, he’s out there.”

Kennedy, a Costa Mesa resident, first saw the Wedge when he and a friend traveled to the tip of the Balboa peninsula to spearfish.

“I saw the waves and said, ‘Hey, this is awesome. Forget spearfishing,’ ” he said. “I was hooked instantly. I started going down every day.”

He went, but in doing so, broke a strict household rule set by his mother: No going to the Wedge, for any reason.

Fran Kennedy had heard the stories of broken bones, dislocated shoulders, and worse. She didn’t want her kids having any part of it.

“She’d see me flying out of the house with my fins,” he said. “She thought I was going to 18th Street (a safer Newport break). You know, I love and respect my mom a lot, but this, well, it wasn’t something you could have kept me from.”

At first, Kennedy, who swam and played water polo at Costa Mesa High School and Orange Coast College, was considered by the locals as just another goofy kid.

“When he first came down, the Wedge crew would see him and his water polo friends,” Deets said. “They’d all be there by 5 a.m., and we’d get there around 6. They used to run around the beach nude, and bodysurf nude, too.

“We really wondered about them. As it turned out, they were a bunch of OK guys with a similar love of bodysurfing the Wedge. After a while, Cashbox became fully assimilated in the present crew.”

And the nickname?

Because of his size--6-feet 5-inches 215 pounds--Kennedy was known to his high school friends as “Sasquatch.”

Deets: “In the early days, we’d hear his buddies yelling at him. But across the water, it’s hard to hear. We thought they were saying, ‘Cashbox! Cashbox!’ So that’s what we called him. It’s stuck ever since.”

Through the years, Kennedy’s love for the Wedge--he calls it “total addiction”--kept most outside interests at bay. “It’s basically been the No. 1 priority in my life,” he said.

He lists his other top interests as kneeboarding (but only on huge waves), boardsurfing at the Huntington Beach Pier (but only in the dark of night), and diving for lobster (by himself in the caves between the rocks of the Newport Harbor jetties, usually around 2 a.m.).

A beach bum? Kennedy, an insurance agent, balks at the suggestion.

“I think it’s sad when people stereotype us as ‘typical bodysurfers,’ ” he said. “Most of us out there are college graduates. Some are working on their Ph.D.s right now. We all have respectable jobs. We just have a deep love for something most people don’t understand.”

And for something that some consider downright insane.

Why, on days when the waves pack as much energy as a locomotive and one mistake can mean a 30-foot free fall, does Kennedy swim out?

“It’s that damn adrenalin flow,” he said, smiling. “On really big days, you get out there, the whole beach is lined with people. You catch a wave, and just before you take off, you look. You’re so high (in the air) you’re looking down on the harbor entrance on the other side (of the jetty). Then you wooosh down this tremendous wall, you hear the crowd screaming, it seems like you’re dropping forever . . .

“Then pow ! You’re thrust down to the bottom, you hit the sand, your ears start to pop. Lots of times you’re swimming to the surface, you get halfway there, you think you’re home free, and wham! The wave tosses you back down again.”

Kennedy paused.

“Yeah, sometimes we even ask ourselves, ‘Why do we do it?”