Wow! what a crowd on May 18! “A Return to the Cradle of Bitchin”

A Return to the Cradle of Bitchin, brought a crowd of over 150 guests to Ocean Beach Historical Society and Point Loma High Alumni Association program, Thurs. May 18t, 2023, at Water’s Edge Faith Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., as we returned to the Cradle of Bitchin with author A. Lee Brown and sculptor Richard Arnold. Lee and Richard are longtime friends, and are both former Pointers, Qwiigs and OB Lifeguards.  The program will be based on Lee’s recently published book Cradle of Bitchin, A Story of Mentors, Watermen, & the Sea.  While “Cradle” explores the California beach culture’s inherited Hawaiian concepts of Kumu a’ o (mentorship of the young) and Lokahi, (the unity between the sea and humanity) it is also a memoir of a youth and adolescence in the Ocean Beach of the 1950s and 1960s. In the words of Richard Arnold: “My Dad died when I was five and the Ocean Beach lifeguards became my surrogate fathers. Those fellows taught me how to harvest and respect the sea and the way of the Waterman. As I look back to those times I realize I could never have had a more bitchin childhood.” We (including generations of PL Grads) had a very Bitchin evening!