Lessons From John

Severson, pictured here at the SURFER offices in the summer of 1970, was revered by his employees for his many talents and humble demeanor.

We may not notice when they occur, but little things make big differences in how we get to where we are. It’s like the so-called butterfly effect: A wee little butterfly flaps its wings in China and eventually a hurricane is born in the Atlantic — or something like that. This is simply the law of “one thing leads to another.” We’ve all got our personal examples of how some small coincidence changed everything for us — the multitudes of tiny moments that have brought each of us to this particular here and now, in which we are converging on these words: John Severson. If one small thing had been different, everything would be different.

Were it not for one such twist of fate, you might never have heard of John Severson. After growing up in San Clemente, California, surfing and learning how to use a camera, then graduating from Long Beach State College with a degree in art education, he had just begun a teaching job back in San Clemente when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. It was 1957, and John was bound for Germany. As he once explained it, “There was this long list of draftees, and they were assigned to either Germany or Hawaii: ‘Man No. 1: Germany. Man No. 2: Hawaii. Man No. 3: Germany,’ and so on. I was going to Germany … and then somebody up the list