Today is a sad day, Leroy Grannis has left us for the great beyond. First off, Leroy was a great human being; honest, hard working, creative and enthusiastic about life. For those who are unfamiliar with the surfing world, Leroy grew up at the beach and documented surfing in it’s seminal stages in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
I met him when I made some camera equipment for him to shoot photos of surfing and sailboarding from the water. I remember him going out to “The Ponds” with guys like Jeff King and telling him to take it easy with guys who were twenty or thirty years younger than him, but he would have none of it, he was going out.
I remember going to his home in the trailer park at La Costa Downs when we went out to a storage shed in his backyard where he stored hundreds of black and white negatives of surfing from the 50’s and 60’s in cardboard boxes in the damp coastal air. I remember telling him he can’t keep surfing history in a damp storage shed and thankfully Jeff Devine came along and took care of those valuable photos.
Leroy was a really good man, a good neighbor, talented photographer and a good friend. So sorry to see him go.
