Tom Morey (born Detroit, Michigan, August 15) is also known by the moniker "Y" is a musician, engineer, and surfer responsible for several technological innovations that have heavily influenced modern developments in surfing equipment design.

Morey was living in Laguna Beach, California, by 1944 and was avidly developing his talent for drumming in his youth and became a professional musician in the 1950s. While surfing as a hobby he attended the University of Southern California and graduated with a B.A. in mathematics in 1957. He married in 1957 and worked for Douglas Aircraft, as a process engineer in composites. After Douglas, he worked a series of jobs involving composite materials and processes, which he applied to his surf-related inventions. He left the corporate world for good in 1964, moved to Ventura and started a series of companies that served the surfing market, currently Morey Surfboards and sponsored surfing competitions such as the The Tom Morey Invitational. He divorced in the late 1960s.

He sold his surfboarding company in 1975 and lived in Hawaii for a decade, then moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, and joined Boeing in 1985. In 1992 he moved back to southern California and, reentering the surf scene, consulted with his former company as it became owned eventually by Wham-O. He ended consulting in January of 1999 founding his own company again.

He had honed his talent as a drummer from his youth, working professionally by the age of 12, that he subsequently performed professionally with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Stew Williamson, Bud Shank and Conti Condolli. He was an original member of the Sons of the Beach ukulele band (on ukelele) in 1950 and formed the Tom Morey Jazz Quartet in 1954. He made music a side hooby until Brotherhood at a Mauna Kea Hotel in the later 1970s and 1980s and plays intermittently since the 1990s back in southern California (including the Tom Morey Trio).

Timeline-

At the age of 11 he came in second in the Green Valley Lake Paddleboard Championships and began surfing in 1952 and wake-surfed behind an ocean-going yacht (no towrope) in April of 1955.

After working for the corporate world he became a member, and then sponsored surfer, of the Velzy and Jacobs Surf team, then Jacobs, then Dewey Weber surf teams and began setting up businesses providing surf boards and inventing technologies for surf boards -

1947

• Tom begins to catch the dangerous waves of life with his friend Chuck Herpick

The 1950s:  

• Created his first "concave nose pocket".  
• Invented something he called the "Wing Tip," a turned-down nose using his aerospac engineering expertise, and is used in all surfboards today.

1964

• Created the first polypropylene fin as the first commercial interchangeable fin system.

1965

• Used resin impregnated cardboard to make a "paper" surfboard which became a television commercial and, a full color, two page advertisement in Reader's Digest (August 1966.
• Established the Tom Morey Invitational Nose Riding Championships, at Ventura Point.
• Designed the Morey Pope Trisect

1971

• Designed the first practical bodyboard, called a Boogie Board after his love of music.

1975

• Boogies boards were designed to became flexible with twin fiberglass rods for stability.

Tom left commercial surfboarding interests in the late 1970s and returned to it in the 1990s. Since then, he has been involved in several surfing companies including Yboards and Catch Surfboards.  He is actively involved in the industry as a mentor, designer and spokesman.

Tom is married to Marchia Ann Morey, "mother of bodyboarding" and has four sons.

(Source- Wikipedia)