A Farewell Wave : Memorial: Pioneering surfer Dewey Weber’s remains are scattered into the waters he was devoted to. During the ceremony, his friends remember ‘a simpler time, when we were immortal.’

It was a morning that Dewey Weber, the late and legendary surfer, would have reveled in--a classic Southern California day, bright and crisp with the promise of warmth to come.

A light offshore breeze had given the waves a little more lift than usual, hollowing them into tempting, chilly tubes. And somehow, despite a recent string of soupy, gray mornings, there was not a wisp of fog in the air.

“Such a gorgeous day,” said Dewey’s former wife, Carol Weber, who had worried throughout the night that the weather would ruin a day to remember. “I thought: ‘Dewey pulled it off again.’ ”

It was so uncharacteristically clear, in fact, that when 80 long boarders began paddling out at 8:30 to a boat that carried Weber’s ashes, the nearly 1,000 people who had gathered on the beach to pay their respects to the flamboyant surfer had no trouble charting their progress. And when the surfers formed a floating semicircle, tossed flowers and held hands as Weber’s remains were scattered into the waves he loved to ride, their droop-shouldered grief was visible to all who watched from shore.

“Dewey led the modern surfboard era. He was at the vanguard,” said Gregg Carroll, 40, a Hughes Aircraft executive from San Clemente. Carroll was among the “watermen” who said their last goodbys to Weber while floating about 30 feet beyond the break and then surfed back to shore. “But old surfers never die,” he said. “They just fade further into the curl.”

David Earl Weber, one of the world’s first surfboard manufacturers, was 54 when he died earlier this month of complications brought on by severe alcohol abuse. But at a memorial service held Saturday on the sands just off Avenue C in Redondo Beach, his tragic end took a back seat to fond memories of the days before he waded into the “deep end,” when his red trunks, white-blond hair and innovative surfing style redefined his chosen sport.

Speaking from behind a carnation-covered surfboard that bore the Weber logo, several of Weber’s oldest friends recalled his webbed toes, his knack with unicycles and yo-yos, his jerky but beautiful way of riding a wave.

The compact man whose swift footwork on the big board earned him the nickname the “Little Man on Wheels” was fiercely competitive, friends said, but was also a prankster. He was outgoing, but always told friends he lamented how hard he was to get to know.

“Dewey used to tell me: ‘I’m really not a people person. I really wish I were. I wish people liked me more,’ ” Gibby Gibson, who grew up with Weber in Manhattan Beach, said as he looked out at a crowd that filled the beach and the cliffs above. “I wish I had him here today because I could prove him wrong.”

Friends said the ocean was something Weber was almost never wrong about.

“He had an amazing ability to read the ocean, to feel the ocean--from the smallest waves of the South Bay beaches to the monster waves of Hawaii,” said Leroy (Sonny) Vardeman, a surfer and Los Angeles County lifeguard--two ocean-bound occupations he shared with the colorful Weber. When Weber was on lifeguard duty, Vardeman recalled, he always wore a Mexican sombrero and had an “entourage” of followers attending to his needs in exchange for surfing tips.

Jeff (Peff) Eick, a real estate developer, was one of those young “gremlins” who so idolized Weber.

They met in 1957--the early days of surfing, before the invention of the wet suit, when the cold California waters often turned a devoted surfer’s knees blue. Eick was just 13 when Weber paddled up next to him one day and took off on the first wave.

“I knew I was witnessing the greatest surfer in the world,” Eick said.

But as time passed, Weber came to represent much more than the hotdog surfing he had helped to pioneer. According to Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer’s Journal, a quarterly for older surfers, Weber became a symbol of an age.

“When word of Dewey’s passing spread . . . it was really like losing a part of your youth--a simpler time, when we were immortal,” Pezman said. “A little bit of that has left with Dewey.”

Not everybody on the beach knew Weber personally.

Bill Brown, 50, a plumbing contractor and former surfer, said he’d come to the service because Weber “was in the water the same time I was. . . . I didn’t come down for him personally. I came down because he represented the ocean, the spirit--he represented the foam of life.”

After the service, about 300 people gathered at a nearby saloon, the Beach Boys Cafe, to reminisce, watch vintage surf movies and raise a glass to the man many credited with putting a polish on their surfing styles. It was more a reunion than a wake.

Ronny Garner, a film industry mechanic from Riverside, was one of several long boarders at the cafe who had “surfed for Dewey” on his competitive teams. He sat at the crowded bar with Dick Sullivan, a Manhattan Beach resident who said he had known Weber since 1956.

“I was a police officer in Hermosa for 23 years. Before that, I was a bartender. In either profession, you got to know Dewey,” said Sullivan, 65. As a cop, he said, a typical interaction with Weber was “ ‘Dewey, turn the stereo down.’ or ‘Dewey, you can’t sleep here.’ He was good people.”

When the two friends bent their elbows in salute to Weber, however, they sipped nonalcoholic drinks.

“I’ve had my drinking days,” said Garner, 44. “But I’ve been clean for six years.”

Sullivan nodded in agreement. “I’m toasting Dewey with 7-Up.”