The 18th annual The Jimmy Surf Fiesta returns to El Porto on Saturday, Oct. 14 to honor the legacy of the event’s namesake, but to also aid a fellow surfer battling ALS.
Surfer and videographer Greg Browning was a good friend of Jimmy Miller’s before the his untimely death in 2004. Browing continued to support the nonprofit Jimmy Miller Foundation, which uses ocean therapy as a way to help those with mental or physical illness as well as injury and disabilities.
Now the JMMF is supporting Browning with a “Plunge for a Cause,” a spin-off of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that made a viral presences on social media beginning in 2014 and raised awareness of the neurodegenerative disease with no known cure.
“I wanted to do something specifically for him to raise funds for his medical care and have that earmarked for him,” said Nancy Miller, co-founder of JMMF and mother of Jimmy Miller.
The Fiesta will still benefit the JMFF’s goal of creating awareness of its ocean therapy programs and will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 42nd Street in El Porto.
The Plunge takes place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Browning is expected to be in attendance.
The event will have its annual five-member team surfing contest where all members of the team are in the water at the same time and compete against other teams.
“The teams are can consist of someone who might be a beginner and someone who might be a pro,” Miller said. “The whole goal is to have everyone on your team catch one really good wave and everyone helps everyone else on the team, which is fabulous. We usually have participants between five and 75.”
The Jimmy Miller Foundation was founded in 2005 and “formalized the concept of using surfing as a modality for healing mental and physical illness,” according to its website, which bills the foundation as the “largest provider of Ocean and Surf Therapy programming in the world.”
Surf therapy with the JMMF started with its founding and under the…
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