The outpouring of incredible stories about legendary industry sales rep Willy Morris is continuing as the industry mourns his sudden passing on April 8.
A Go Fund Me campaign has been started to support the ongoing education of his daughters and to cover end-of-life expenses. A celebration of his life will also take place in coming weeks.
Willy was an early sales rep for Quiksilver back in the 1980s and stayed with the company for decades. More recently, he worked with Salty Crew and Cova.
His family said he died from a heart attack.
There have been so many moving stories shared on social media about the impact Willy had on such a wide range of people. We decided to follow up with two people who knew him extraordinarily well: Tom Holbrook, who talked Willy into becoming a Quiksilver sales rep after his days surfing as a team rider for the brand, and Mark Richards of Val Surf, who became great friends with him after working together for years.
A lot has been said about what a great surfer, fisherman and snowboarder Willy was.
But Willy was also great at business, Tom said.
“The best thing about Willy is that everybody liked him,” Tom said. “He had the inherent ability to show a line or talk about product like nobody else.
“He took to (sales) so well it was just incredible. He was a legend at business,” Tom said.
“Everybody loved to work with him, he was so professional and he cared,” he said. “He was so passionate about Quiksilver and the brand.”
In addition to the business side, Willy was the best partner in crime when it came to any kind of surf, snowboarding or fishing trip.
“If we were organizing a boat trip and people knew Willy was going, they were all over it,” Tom said. “There was a line to get on the boat. He was the ring leader.”
Tom remembers buying Willy a snowboard when snowboarding was just starting so Tom would have someone to go with.
They started taking people up to Snow Summit and introducing people to the sport.
“Willy took to it really quickly and went faster and harder than anybody,” Tom said.
Going harder than anyone is a theme I keep hearing about Willy. He could out surf, out fish, out snowboard, out eat, and out drink anybody.
Amazingly, even after some crazy nights during the early days of ASR, Willy was always at the Quiksilver booth bright and early the next morning, ready to do business, Tom said.
“We gained so much respect because he was so professional and good at what he did, but boy, you didn’t want to party and try to keep up with him, because he’d kick everybody’s butt,” he said.
He was also quite the prankster. If someone tried to pull one over on him on a surf trip, that person a week later would find that some old food or dead rat had been slipped into their board bag as payback.
“Willy was bigger than life and always has been,” Tom said.
He was also known for his generosity and thoughtfulness and helping people during hard times.
Just a week or so before his death, he stopped by Mark Richards’ beach house in Ventura to show Mark the Cova line.
That day, Willy brought Mark’s wife, Kay, a bouquet of flowers, something he did frequently. He was always showing up with albacore or lobster or other bounty from his fishing trips.
Mark and the Richards family have been friends with Willy for decades and Mark’s sons thought of Willy as an older brother.
Back in the Quiksilver times, the product showings frequently got interrupted with a surf session, Mark said.
“He would set up the line, and our eyes would constantly be looking out at the surf,” Mark said. “We’d look at each other and say ‘let’s get wet, this can wait!’”
Mark went on many surf and snow trips with Willy over the years and many included just two of them at the Ranch or Channel Islands.
“There was no one that knew those areas better from a surfing, fishing, and boating perspective,” Mark said. “I always felt super comfortable with him at the helm.”
There was another area where Mark really respected Willy. Willy was a Valley Boy, from Woodland Hills, which was a stigma in the days when Willy was coming up as a surfer.
“A lot of surfers came from the Valley but didn’t talk about it,” Mark said.
There was a lot more localism then, “but Willy was always proud of being from the Valley.”
That Valley connection brought Mark and Willy closer.
“Although we had an early and strong friendship for a variety of reasons, it was this Valley association that just sealed the bond and relationship between Willy and the Val Surf family,” Mark said. “He was such a respected, good natured and giant of an individual who was loved by so many.”
Now, his friends are turning their attention to helping Willy’s family during this tough time.
They say it’s the least they can do given what kind of person he was.
“If something needed to be done for somebody on the personal side, he always thought of it before anybody,” Tom said.
“He was bigger than life in the surfing world, and left a positive impact on so many people.”
