rose to the top of a young and burgeoning industry, which also received a boost in popularity after the surfing movie Gidget came out in 1959.

From the Surfline website comes this view of Alter's early days in the surfboard business:

"Hobart Alter Jr. was born and raised in Ontario, California, but his family had a summerhouse in Laguna Beach, where Alter got into the full array of ocean sports. Initiated into surfing by Walter Hoffman, he started shaping balsa boards in the early '50s. When the family's front yard became a litter of balsa-blank glue-ups, hardened patches of resin and piles of balsa shavings, his father moved him off the property by buying him a lot on Pacific Coast Highway in nearby Dana Point for $1,500. That was 1953.In February of 1954, with the first stage of the shop completed, Hobie Surfboards opened its doors after a total investment of $12,000. "People laughed at me for setting up a surf shop," Hobie remembers. "They said that once I'd sold a surfboard to each of the 250 surfers on the coast, I'd be out of business. But the orders just kept coming.'"

As his business grew, Alter hired many notable surfers and board shapers. One of them was five-time U.S. surfing champion Corky Carroll, one of the most successful pro surfers of the 1960s and '70s.

"He had a major impact on my life when I was young," Carroll said of Alter, according to the Register. "A true legend and always a really great person."

In the late 1960s, Alter