EASTHAM – In Barney Burrill’s published obituary, the list of survivors includes the names of family members, his sisters, wife, daughters, and his grandchildren “along with surfer brothers in many parts of the world.”
Barney Burrill, Cape Surfing legend, at Marconi Beach
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BURRILL FAMILY
“Barney’s soul was surfing,” said Rick Weeks, 66, of Orleans, who met Burrill at a stretch of beach in Wellfleet that surfers call “Four Mile” when Burrill was a young kid with “wavy red hair and a big smile. He was a really smiley kid,” recalled Weeks.
That young smiley kid lived 56 adrenalin-filled years, according to surfer friends contacted by Cape Cod Wave. Robert M. Burrill Jr. died of lung cancer on April 23. “He was a junior,” said Burrill’s friend, Greg Norris, 55, of Eastham. “So the family, instead of calling him after his father, they just called him Barney.”
The Scene At “Four Mile”
Norris had lived in Hawaii and then Boston, and came down to the Cape in the summer to surf. “I saw a kid my age that surfed,” said Norris. “There was a little surf scene here in the summer.”
In Wellfleet, on the beach that surfers called “Four Mile,” at Whitecrest Beach, Weeks recalled that surfers used to park illegally on the side of the road and then go down to the waves.
“There was a couple of young kids that started to get into the surf scene,” said Weeks. “Barney Burrill was one of them. Barney was a little kid. We were the bigger kids. He was little then, he looked up to the big guys,” said Weeks. “To the little kids, we were the big surfer dudes.”
Norris met Burrill about that time, said, “Rick Weeks was one of the very best surfers around when we were kids.” It was good to get his respect, said Norris.
Burrill was little compared to the big guys but Weeks noticed, “He was good. He was a strapping kid, starting to get tall with long legs and arms.”
In late September of 2013, at the Nauset Surf ‘N Music Festival, Burrill spoke to Cape Cod Wave while holding a plywood surfboard that his uncle made for his cousin in 1965. “I was just a little rascal back then (in 1965),” said Burrill. “I was nine years old. I was thinking it was cool, man. Way cool. I thought my cousin was the luckiest kid in the world.”
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