It was August of the famed Summer of ’69 in New Jersey. Dick Messerol’s beloved Yankees were playing .500 ball with Joe Pepitone at first base. Amid the radical social changes happening, he and his friends were living through the single-fin revolution. He and three friends packed a car (…and a bowl) and started driving to this festival everyone was buzzing about in upstate New York.
“We had a big bag of weed and some mind-altering substances,” remembers Mez, who would go on to become a Surfer Mag staff photog and the godfather of East Coast surf photography.
“But we got caught in this traffic jam. We figured we were going to be in the car forever. And we also knew two things. One, there was a hurricane swell … Hurricane Debbie. Obviously, it was rudimentary surf forecasting but we’d seen it watching the Channel 5 News NY. The other thing we knew was that Joe Cocker was playing Convention Hall in Asbury Park with a young band called Led Zepplin. And we knew there would be surf.”
Debbie wound up being a Cat 3 storm that never threatened land. Zepplin had turned down that big festival upstate to play Asbury. Mez and crew caught Zep with Cocker, who revved through Asbury Park on his way to the historic performance at Woodstock while the boys from Point Pleasant chased 4 to 6-foot hurricane swell for the next two days.
Dick Messerol
That same season Mez pulled up to Bay Head for a glassy little summer swell. He was greeted on the dune by John Ker, a true pioneer of East Coast surf photography (particularly water shots) who would become Surfer’s go-to guy for New Jersey stories and images. He would move to California to pursue surf photography and became one of the most important BMX and Mountain Bike photogs of all time.
“Ker was the guy back then who was shooting from the water. He had this Nikonos 35 mm and we had the same size foot. He offered me his fins and the camera and said, ‘Here. Give it a shot.’ I remember thinking that I really didn’t get anything,” says Mez.
Ker was gracious enough to show the younger lensman the basics, Being a surfer first, Mez had the instinct and timing. He eventually showed the negatives of that session to Ker who took note of one shot of the late Benny Hipple.
“Hipple was a great surfer, same time period as Scotty Duerr,” recalls Mez, “And Ker said, ‘This one is good.’ Ker sent that photo to Jeff Divine for me and it ran in Surfer as part of a New Jersey feature. That was my first published shot. I got $20 and put it toward my own water housing.”
Dick Messerol
That was really the start of Mez’s storied career. He was able to deliver in a professional manner while still operating among the underground surf culture through the 70s eventually earning a spot as Senior Staff photog at Surfer for seven years. Hurricane swells were his bread and butter from South Florida, the Outer Banks, his old Jersey haunts and the points of New England – the highs of the scores and the lows of the landfall. He has now documented 55 of them.
Along with cohort, Tom Dugan of New York, they launched Eastern Surf Mag in 1990 and would move to Florida, the breadbasket of the East Coast industry. ESM was a newsprint voice of the East Coast for some 28 years, at its peak reaching issues that were 198 pages.
“We were a unique platform for East Coast surf. From the surfers, the shops, the photographers, the video guys and the brands, we just gave everyone a flag to rally behind,” says Mez.
The mag made a profit. And while they couldn’t pay contributors a ton, they paid everyone and they paid on time, something of an anomaly in the world of subcultural publishing. He was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2006 and the New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame in 2015.
Tonya Messerol
“What’s better than chasing a hurricane swell around Florida or a nor’easter up to Canada in two feet of snow?” he laughs.
In 2014, he married Tonya, an absolute gem of a woman, and stepped easily into the role of caring father and grandfather. Then, in 2017, ESM had to shut its doors. Tough days for print. (We know all about that.) Mez had his property in Brevard County and made peace with the end of the mag in print.
“I was lucky that we did this in an era where the surf industry spigot was open at full blast. I mean, you could show me a balance sheet but I wasn’t really going to pay attention if knew Indian River was going off. I have enough and I never really needed a lot of shit anyway, just a new camera every now and then. I say I’m retired but you don’t ever really retire from photography,” he muses.
It’s been one of the longest careers of any surf photog.
“Mez was one of the few who got to ride the elevator up. He started shooting and living the lifestyle when the surf mags were coming up. He’s done it since 1970, able to see the high points,” says Matt Walker, ESM’s former editor who now publishes Outer Banks Milepost with his wife, Laurin.
“But he stays current. That’s really important. I remember the film/digital debate. Mez adopted right at the beginning. Now, he has a drone and all the latest gear. He has the ability and he has the passion. As long as those twin attributes keep him moving, he’s not going to kick out. He’s going to milk it to the sand.”
Mez is 72 and shot the Eastern Surfing Association Easterns last week. Tonya has given him a hall pass to shoot, travel, surf and reconnect with friends until he has had his fill. Then it’s home to Florida for the rest of the fall.
“We started doing it for the love and the passion, not the pay,” he says, “Dugan and I still maintain the website and the Instagram. We’ve come full circle. We’re back to doing it for the love and the passion.”
Unidentified, Pump House, Hurricane Sandy, 2012
Dick Messerol
Brett Barley, North Carolina, Hurricane Phillipe, 2023
Dick Messerol
Evan Geiselman, North Carolina, Hurricane Phillipe, 2023
Dick Messerol
Sam Hammer, Canadian Maritimes, 2022
Dick Messerol
CJ Hobgood, Melbourne Beach, Florida, Hurricane Ernesto 2024
Dick Messerol
Cam Richards, North Carolina, Hurricane Phillipe, 2023
Dick Messerol