Bing was born in Torrance, California in 1936 and grew up just
a few blocks from the Manhattan Beach pier. When he was 12, Dale
Velzy--working as a lifeguard at the time--asked Bing if he wanted to
try one of his old boards. As Bing recalls, "the board was about eight
feet long and weighed about eighty pounds...we pearled for the first
ten or so waves but then finally I remember standing up and riding
straight off all the way to the beach." I knew at that moment that this
was the sport for me."

Dale Velzy mentored many of the best-known shapers of the '60s
and early '70s, and Bing Copeland was one of them. In the early '50s,
he helped Velzy by gluing up balsa blanks, shaping wood fins, sanding
boards, but "mostly sweeping up balsa shavings." He also worked as a
lifeguard between 1954 and 1955, the savings from which allowed him to
make his first trip to Hawaii in September 1955. Money ran out in a few
months, so Bing and good friend Rick Stoner joined the Coast Guard.
Fortunate enough to be stationed near Honolulu, they surfed Ala Moana
every afternoon and the North Shore during their annual 30-day leave.

Discharged in late '57, Bing went back to surfing and
lifeguarding in California. But within months, he was off again, this
time crewing on a 42-foot sailboat with Rick Stoner to Hawaii, Tahiti,
Moorea and beyond. They ended up in New Zealand in November of 1958,
where they surfed for two months. Before leaving, they built eight or
ten boards for members of a local surf club, which led them to open
Bing and Rick Surfboards on the Hermosa Beach strand in October of
1959. A year later, Bing bought out Rick and Bing Surfboards was born.
By 1965, production had reached 40 boards a day.

Bing Copeland influenced surfing in many ways and worked with
some of best-known surfers of the time. Names like Donald Takayama and
David Nuuhiwa were included on the list of famous Bing team riders;
Takayama is also a very talented shaper and introduced the Bing Donald
Takayama Model. He also helped develop two extremely popular Bing
models bearing the Nuuhiwa name--the "Noserider" and the
"Lightweight"--of which an estimated 10,000 units were sold between
1965 and 1967. In 1967, surfboard designer Dick Brewer shaped the Bing
Pipeliner, a model that Brewer still shapes today. In 1973, Bing
produced a trademarked Bonzer model, a design introduced a year earlier
and one of the first to use three fins--now a standard on all
performance shortboards.

By 1974, Bing licensed his popular name and moved his family to
Idaho, where he lives at least half of each year. He spends winters in
Baja, where he still surfs 3 or 4 days a week. Bing Copeland has been
extremely gracious about sharing both his insights and his adventures
during the greatest days the sport has ever known. Today, talented
surfboard shaper Matt Calvani and well-known '60s surfer Lance Carson
have teamed up to make Bing surfboards and clothing available once
again. They have a website that's worth the visit have a look at www.classicbingsurfboards.com

Check out more classic shop biographies at http://www.lastwave.com/legends/