Butch Van Artsdalen

Charles Van Artsdalen, known as Butch, was an American surfer born on January 31, 1941, in Norfolk, Virginia, who moved to La Jolla, California, at age fourteen and died on July 18, 1979, aged thirty eight. He is best known as a pioneer of surfing 25-foot waves on the North Shore of Oahu and of tube riding in Hawaii during the early 1960s and 1970s, and his mastery of the Banzai Pipeline earned him the nickname Mr. Pipeline. A member of the Duke Kahanamoku Surf Team, he appeared in surf films including The Endless Summer and won the 1969 Stone Steps Invitational Surf Contest at Leucadia, California. In his later years he stayed at the Banzai Pipeline and worked as a lifeguard.