Other Bruce Conover
King Of The New World with Loose Bagpipe salute 320kbit/s

This is a remix of my other pages version with additional bagpipe salute for the owner of Body Glove as he was put to rest out at sea yesterday. This was his bagpipe salute I placed in at the end of the track.

Here is an article about this fine Southbay icon.

Body Glove co-founder Bob Meistrell dies on boat during Catalina paddleboard race
By
By Kristin S. Agostoni Staff Writer

kristin.agostoni@dailybreeze.com, @kagostoni on Twitter

POSTED: 06/17/13, 12:01 AM PDT | 0 COMMENTS

BOB MEISTRELL: Body Glove co-founder changed world of surfing

Photo Galleries: Bob Meistrell, Body Glove co-founder, dies
Up until the day he died, Body Glove co-founder Bob Meistrell had the chance to do what he loved: power his 72-foot yacht, the Disappearance, in the waters off Southern California.

Meistrell, a surfing and diving legend who started making insulated wet suits decades ago with his identical twin brother, Bill, suffered a heart attack Sunday morning while leading a paddleboard race off Catalina Island, said his son, Robbie. The Torrance man was 84.

"He was one of a kind," Robbie Meistrell said. "And he died doing exactly what he wanted to do. ... He drove his damn boat every day. He touched a lot of people. Best human being I've ever known."

The Disappearance was the lead boat in the 22-mile Rock 2 Rock race Sunday from Isthmus Cove on Catalina to Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. As he's done in previous years, Meistrell led the paddleboarders out of the harbor about 6:30 a.m., his son said.

Meistrell is a South Bay legend -- a veteran waterman, successful businessman and local philanthropist who in his later years powered his boat frequently for charity events and to scatter the ashes of friends' loved ones at sea, his son said.

He'd been active into his 80s -- "I don't know anyone who could keep up with him. He was always on the move," Robbie Meistrell said -- and even marked his 80th birthday with a dive off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, surrounded by family and friends. (He'd done a couple more since then, his son added.)

Meistrell was born July 31, 1928, in Boonville, Mo., and grew up diving with his twin in a pool using a 5-gallon vegetable can for a diving helmet and a tire pump and hose for air.

"We were about as close as we could be," Bob Meistrell once told the Breeze. "We did everything together."

The twins, with their mother, two brothers and three sisters, eventually left the Midwest for Manhattan Beach, where the brothers' love for the water evolved. After graduating in 1947 from El Segundo High School, they worked as some of the first Los Angeles County ocean lifeguards.

They spent time apart in 1950, when both Meistrells were drafted into the U.S. Army. Bob was stationed at Fort Ord, while his older brother was sent to fight in Korea, where he was awarded a Bronze Star.

The Body Glove empire started taking shape in the 1950s; in 1953, the Meistrells bought into the Dive N' Surf store, then situated near the Redondo Beach breakwater, that was owned by surfboard maker Hap Jacobs and surfer and diver Bev Morgan.

When Jacobs left to start his own venture making surfboards, the twins' mother loaned them $1,800 to get into the business with Morgan. He was a friend they'd met while lifeguarding and surfing in the South Bay.

Finally, in 1953, the brothers discovered an insulating material used in the back of refrigerators. It was with this "neoprene" that they fashioned the first practical wet suits -- an innovation that helped the twins to buy Morgan's share of Dive N' Surf in 1957. He went on to manufacture commercial diving helmets in Santa Barbara.

The brothers' shop, which sits today on North Broadway in Redondo Beach, became the home of "The Body Glove." As the story goes, the term was coined in 1966 when a marketing consultant asked the pair to describe how their wet suits fit. "Like a glove," they said.