NO WAVE IS INSIGNIFICANT SURFING CAMP WITH THE PASKOWITZ CLAN IS ABOUT MORE THAN TECHNIQUE

It's 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and Dorian Paskowitz is wide awake. A
sinewy, deeply tanned man who has dedicated most of his adult
life to surfing, the 75-year-old Paskowitz checks the gear
loaded onto one of two 1965-vintage campers. Satisfied with the
configuration of the loads, he calls to one of his sons to "wake
the kids and get the show on the road." Then he watches as his
instructions are carried out. Within minutes, two
thirtysomething men and five teenagers stumble bleary-eyed out
of their tents and into the campers.

The convoy journeys a mile down the San Diego Freeway to San
Onofre State Beach, where the "kids" wolf down breakfast, change
into wet suits, grab their surfboards and plunge into the
Pacific Ocean. Paskowitz settles into a beach chair, picks up a
pair of well-worn binoculars and lets out a sigh. At 7 a.m. it's
shaping up to be another perfect day in paradise.

In Southern California, where the sun shines early and often,
and the waves curl beachward in gently precise tubes, summer
days were invented for surfing. Since 1972, the Paskowitz
family--Dorian; his wife, Julieta; their sons, David, Jonathan,
Abraham, Israel, Moses, Adam, Salvador and Joshua; and their
daughter, Navah--has run this surfing camp near San Clemente, a
beach town about 70 miles north of San Diego that is best known
as the site of the Nixon "summer" White House. But locally San
Clemente is known as the home of the first family of surfing,
which teaches campers everything from how to stand up on a board
to how to catch waves and how to master the ever-changing forms
of "surfer-dude" speak.

The coed camp, which is for "people age nine to 90," according
to the Paskowitzes, lasts one week, and there are usually eight
sessions per summer. Mornings and afternoons are spent surfing
at a spot called Old Man's Break, but there is plenty of time in
between to eat, doze and relax, and during the week there is a
foray into San Clemente to visit local surf shops. At night
campers sleep in tents at San Mateo State Park, where the
Paskowitzes rig up a VCR so that everyone can watch surfing
and/or horror videos before passing out from exhaustion. The
cost is $840 per week--meals, snacks, campsite fees and surfing
equipment included.

Most of the enrollees in this particular session are novices,
such as Matt Garrison, 32, a corporate lawyer who has come out
from New York City. "In the times that I've caught waves on a
boogie board, the feeling is like nothing else," says Garrison,
sitting on the back of a camper on the first day of
instruction. "Not only are you moving, but what you're moving on
is also moving."

Another novice, Robert Schwartz, 13, enrolled for two
consecutive weeks to get in maximum practice time. "I skateboard
and I snowboard, but I live in Tucson, and there aren't many
waves," he says. "I'm hoping to stand up on a board and learn to
do a few turns."

On the first morning Israel Paskowitz, 33, a former national
longboard champ, teaches the camp's most basic lesson: the
"1-2-3" method of standing up on a board. This involves 1) lying
flat on the board, hands gripping the sides; 2) raising the
upper body; and 3) jumping up to the erect surfing position,
feet apart and knees bent in a boxerlike stance. After
demonstrating the technique on land, Israel leads his students
into the ocean and lets them rip.

"It takes about 10 minutes to get a leash on them and put them
into the water," says David Paskowitz, 37. "We just sit back and
say, 'Well, are you happy?' And they say, 'Dude, I'm stoked.'"

The story of the Paskowitz clan has taken on mythic proportions
in the surfing community, and with reason. Dorian, who moved to
Southern California from Galveston, Texas, in the mid-1930s,
graduated from Stanford Medical School in 1945. He says he
attempted to live a "normal" life, but surfing, and the pursuit
of the perfect wave, ultimately prevailed.

In 1956 he walked into what he remembers as a "very wicked bar"
on Catalina Island. There he met Julieta Emilia Paez, a 6'2"
contralto who would soon become his third wife. "I thought she
was Tahitian, but it turns out she was Mexican-American," says
Dorian with a laugh. "I fell in love."

Dorian persuaded Julieta to surf the world with him. Together
they traveled through Mexico and the U.S., then journeyed to
Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Spain and the South Seas. They schooled
all nine of their children at home. When the family needed
money, Dorian would find part-time work at clinics and hospitals
that treated low-income patients.

David, the oldest child, remembers that "at age six and seven,
we used to quiz each other on the Physicians' Desk Reference. We
would spend hours with novels: Not one word was spoken, because
we were all in our individual books."

As Israel recalls, "Most of growing up was great. Traveling the
world and the adventures we had were amazing. But I don't like
remembering everything, like watching my dad write a bad check
so we could eat. That was scary for a young kid."

As he watched his children grow up and begin to leave the nest,
Dorian came up with the idea for the camp. "I wanted my kids
next to me, enjoying the summer," he says.

Twenty-five years later, that's exactly what the camp is--an
opportunity to enjoy a summer week with the Paskowitzes, who
teach a lot about surfing and camping and a little about life.
"We take our campers and incorporate them into the lifestyle
that we live," says David. "We treat them as part of our family."

Bill Greenwood, an anesthesiologist from Key West, has been
coming to the camp with his daughter Kristin, now 20, for the
last 11 years. "Learning to surf in a family atmosphere makes
the camp different," says Bill. "The campers all get caught up
in this extended family, so young kids don't feel out of place,
older people don't feel out of place, and women don't feel out
of place."

"It's great," says Garrison, proudly displaying a scraped knee.
"You get a lot of time in the water with people who not only
know how to surf but know how to teach people to surf."

Robert Schwartz, meanwhile, is already planning what he wants to
accomplish during his second week. "My goal is to do more
tricks," he says. "I want to learn how to turn and how to get up
faster on the board. Once I learn to stand up faster, I can
catch the wave a bit longer, and I can catch different types of
waves."

When the summer-camp season is over, Dorian and Julieta head
south to spend the winter months in their camper in Baja
California, Mexico's most western state. Their children, with
their children in tow, occasionally journey south to visit. No
longer a wandering tribe, the second generation of Paskowitzes
has settled down: David, 27-year-old Adam and 21-year-old Joshua
are rock musicians; Jonathan, 35, is an executive with Black
Flys, a fashion-sunglasses company; Israel surfs competitively
and makes his own line of surfboards, called Izzy; Abraham, 34,
is an international sales manager for Jaisel, a clothing
company; Moses, 32, is a transportation manager for the
Teamsters; Salvador, 29, owns a graphic business that provides
art designs for surfwear companies; and Navah, 27, is a
part-time model for Guess? sportswear.

The children still listen closely when their father speaks about
surfing and life. To Dorian, who tries to catch a wave every
day, surfing is all about the allure of the cosmic wave. "A wave
is the end result of vast quantities of energy striking upon the
surface of the sea, pushing it down in one place, thereby making
it rise up in another place," he says. "The waves that you see
here start out in Antarctica at about 80 feet. By the time they
get here, they're the most well-fashioned, beautifully sculpted
things in the world. And when you hook yourself to this enormous
atmospheric energy that's so cosmic and so vast, something in
that primordial beginning washes off onto you, and you become a
part of it."

Camp dismissed.

L.A.-based David Davis does most of his surfing with a remote
channel changer.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT BECK Dorian (center, dancing with Julieta) started the camp so he could be surrounded by his kids. [Dorian Paskowitz and Julieta Paskowitz surrounded by men and women standing on surfboards]

TWO COLOR PHOTOS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT BECK Joshua Paskowitz teaches a camper how to stand; Schwartz (below, right) and a pal are happy campers. [Boy and Joshua Paskowitz surfing; boy and Robert Schwartz holding surfboards]