Surfing museum founder Natalie Kotsch dies
The International Surfing Museum founder Natalie Kotsch, a real estate broker who grew up more than 600 miles from the nearest ocean and never swam, much less surfed in the Pacific, died Feb. 20, 2014, after battling cancer for at least six years. She was 76.
Newsday's obituary for Natalie Kotsch
Credit: Los Angeles Times / Allen J. Schaben
After the founder of the International Surfing Museum dipped a toe in the beautiful blue Pacific, she never bothered to hang the other nine.
It was too cold, and the last thing a Canadian farm girl wanted in California was cold.
Even so, Natalie Kotsch was intrigued by surfing culture, in love with the town that calls itself Surf City, and unrelenting in her drive to establish a museum devoted to the sport.
Kotsch, an effervescent real estate broker who grew up more than 600 miles from the nearest ocean and never swam, much less surfed, in the Pacific, died Feb. 20 at her home in Huntington Beach. She was 76.
Kotsch had battled cancer for at least six years, her daughter Julie Holson said.
Kotsch, her husband and their two young daughters landed in Huntington Beach in 1976, drawn by a friend of a friend from Ontario who was working in the oil industry.
She threw herself into civic activities, studied for her real estate license and fell head over heels for surfing.
Opened in 1988, the International Surfing Museum hosted concerts, drew tourists and served as a meeting spot for locals.
Half of Kotsch's ashes will be taken to a family plot in Canada and half will be scattered in the sea off Huntington Beach.
"She joked that it would be her second dip in the ocean," Holson said.
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