Woody Brown

Woodbridge "Woody" Parker Brown (1912–2008) was an American surfer and watercraft designer best known for inventing the modern catamaran. He was also instrumental in promoting the growth of surfing in the mainland United States; among his accomplishment in surfboard shaping was an early fin design. Early life Woodbridge Brown was born into a wealthy family of Wall Street brokers on January 5, 1912, in New York City. By the time of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 he had rejected the trappings of this life, though still benefited from its connections. At this time, he had moved out of the family home and was sleeping on hangar floors, helping with chores with early aviators such as Charles Lindbergh, whom he waved off on his historic 1927 flight to Paris. Aviation Inspired by Lindbergh, he bought a glider for $25 and towed it to California with his new four-year-old stepdaughter Jenny and wife Betty Sellon, a widowed daughter of a retired army officer with a distaste for the glitz of the "gilded age", whom he'd met at a society party he'd been persuaded to attend. For the next 5 years he was an active member of a small group of pioneering gliders. He survived some spectacular crashes. He once stated, "I died two or three times already, you know." Brown was the first to launch a glider off the cliffs at La Jolla and in 1939 set a new world record for altitude, distance, and time aloft by flying his glider, Thunderbird, 263 miles from Texas to Kansas. He received a telegram of congratulations from President Herbert Hoover.