Cocoa Beach surfer honored with paddle-out

Friends, family, surfers gather to honor Dana Brown

COCOA BEACH, Fla. – Dana Brown would have loved what happened Saturday on the sand and in the ocean off Robert Murkshe Park: About 200  surfers braved the wind and paddled over choppy little waves to remember him, friend or acquaintance that he was, according to News 6 partner Florida Today.

Before they set out for the water and after they left it, they told stories of one of the great characters of Cocoa Beach: A trim, athletic, long-bearded, evangelical-minded man who lived for 15 years with his father in an old Ford van at the park, or sometimes in a parking lot of a church up the road.

Brown "lived to surf," in the words of one of his friends, and he died doing what he loved.

Having driven to California following the death in March of his father, George Brown, from whom he was inseparable, on Nov. 6, the 60-year-old Brown surfed into a pillar at the Huntington Beach Pier and later was pronounced dead.

Eight siblings attended the paddleout, some from as far away as Honduras and Colorado. Friends arrived from the Orlando area and other parts of Florida, and Cocoa Beach's surfing community was well represented.

Some who attended and many who didn't signed posters that displayed photos of Brown from childhood to adulthood, including a shot of a mustachioed young Army enlisted man. Some penned Bible verses on the boards. Others simply scratched or inked their names on the wood rails alongside the walkway.

Drivers of 40 Volkswagens, en route to a toy drive, honked their horns as they passed the park.

The board Brown rode on the day of his death was displayed, as was a woodwork surfboard memorial by his brother Bob, a fellow surfer and Merritt Island resident.

Donna Avery of Cape Canaveral said she raised about $7,500 through crowd-funding to help pay for the event, which she organized

"Dana and I were very close," said veteran Avery, of Cape Canaveral. "The day he left for California, he asked me to care for the garden where his dad is while he was gone.  couldn't imagine him not coming back."

Mark Ewald of Cocoa Beach did not paddle out, but arrived with his wife and son to remember a man he sometimes hired to do odd jobs around his property,  near the park on 16th Street South.

"I knew him from the beach, where he surfed and my son was a lifeguard," Ewald said. "He would throw on his running shoes and run with me. He tried to talk religion to me and it was kind of interesting, but he never converted me."

He had reason to be grateful to Ewald, too.

"The last time he came to our house, he took a hot shower and he said it was his first hot shower in months," he said. "He showered in cold water (of public showers) at the beach, and he really appreciated it. He was just a real nice, real spiritual guy."