Juliette Paskowitz

Juliette Emilia Paez was born in Long Beach, California, one of eight children born to Mexican immigrants Salvador Paez and Emilia Paez.^[2][3] She trained as an opera singer at Long Beach State University.^[4]

Juliette Paez worked as a telephone operator and was a singer with the Roger Wagner Chorale before she married. Paskowitz and her husband opened a surf school at San Onofre in 1975. Along with their children, they were called "the First Family of Surfing".^[5] In 1991, the whole family recorded a song written by son David, "It's Real".^[6] A documentary, Surfwise: The Amazing True Odyssey of the Paskowitz Family (2007), explored their work and their unusual family life.^[7][8][9] She also appeared on The Daily Habit (2008), a news program about surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding. She sued Lionsgate Television and Polsky Films in 2015, for money owed from another project based on the family's story.^[10][11][12]

In 1959, Paez converted to Judaism, learned to surf, and married physician and surfer Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, as his third wife.^[13] (They also married in 1964 in Hawaii.)^[14] They had nine children, eight sons and a daughter, born between 1959 and 1974, and raised the children in camper homes,^[15] traveling often including stints in Mexico, Hawaii and Israel, but usually based near San Clemente.^[4][16][17] After their children were grown, the Paskowitzes lived in Baja California.^[18]

She was widowed when Doc Paskowitz died in 2014,^[19] and she died in 2021, aged 89 years, at a care home in San Clemente, California. She was survived by her nine children: David, Jonathan, Abraham, Israel, Moses, Adam, Salvador, Joshua, and Navah, as well as 27 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.^[20][21]

Her son Salvador Paskowitz became a noted screenwriter. Her daughter, Navah Paskowitz, married actor Ed Asner's son Matt, and is active in autism charities.^[22] Israel (Izzy) still runs Paskowitz Surf Camp, with sessions in California, Mexico, and New York.^[23][24]