When Janet MacPherson started surfing around 1955, she was a rarity in a sport dominated by men. In those days, male surfers would sometimes throw rocks at her because they didn’t want a woman on their waves. She overcame the initial resistance to become a surfing icon, known worldwide and revered in her native Malibu in Southern California. Remarkably, she continued surfing for more than 60 years, riding the waves through her 70s and into her 80s. She died on March 5th, at age 84, of cancer in her home on Carbon Beach in Malibu. 

Janet MacPherson often surfed with her son, Sean MacPherson, a well-known hotelier. She rode the waves while pregnant with him in New Zealand in the mid-1960s. “I was surfing before I was born,” he once told The New York Times.

From the New York Times obituary:

Ms. MacPherson and her friends traveled the world surfing, and in the 1960s she found herself in Australia and New Zealand, where she met and married Tim Murdoch, a fellow surfer and Mr. MacPherson’s father. Although the marriage ended in divorce, she was in New Zealand long enough be crowned its women’s surfing champion in 1965.

When she wasn’t surfing, she was developing a modest real estate business, acquiring rental properties in Malibu.

A favorite surfing spot for Ms. MacPherson and her son was Shipwreck, off the Baja peninsula in Mexico. While on a trip there in 1981, she met Stephen Farbus, who was on a surfing trip of his own. They married in 2003. In addition to him and her son, she is survived by a sister, Marie MacPherson, and two grandchildren.

Among those inspired by Ms. MacPherson’s adventurousness was her daughter-in-law, Rachelle Hruska MacPherson, founder of the Lingua Franca clothing label.

“To me, she embodies everything about female empowerment,” she said by email. “Doing what you want to do, how you want to do it, on your terms. She never once mentioned being a feminist. She didn’t have to — she just was.”

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.