A planetary patriot

Their deaths comes amid my series about influential people. This is fitting, in its own way, in that Rob embodied the word influence, without ever holding elective office.

His influence on the environment and good works is vast; it is unlikely I can do more than scratch the surface of all he has done, and what he means to me.

As Supervisor Jackie Speier said this week, he rode waves, and he made waves.

It begins in the ocean in Pacifica, where Rob — surfing nickname “Birdlegs” — was one of the first to take to the waves in the early 1960s, before surfing became a national craze. I joined him in the ocean a few years later, but already he was a legend and I dared not try to ride with him.

Still, we had the same view about surfers who would sit on their boards waiting for the perfect ride while wave after wave went by.

“He who catches the most waves wins,” Rob liked to say.

It was about fun. Then. Always. And that became something more.

Surfing gave Rob a deep and abiding love for the environment, particularly the ocean, which he visited almost every week.

He believed he could have fun while doing good. Out of these two things, he built a most remarkable life, full of joy, adventure, what he called capers, good works and years and years of laughter and colorful yarns.

I met Rob directly in the early 1970s, when he was district rep for then-Assemblyman Leo Ryan, and I was working for a local newspaper. Rob wore a cape in those days.

Through his company, Roanoke, and with his partners, David Oke and J.B. Moore (and for a period of time, my wife, Kathy), they became a go-to company for media campaigns for good causes. Their cluttered offices in a small house in Menlo Park was my safe house, where I could hide out and hang out.

Rob’s list of accomplishments is astounding — fighting ocean pollution with the Surfrider Foundation, promoting California’s landmark Endangered Species Preservation Program, even a motorcycle safety program with the California Highway Patrol.

Rob could get anyone on the phone. And then get them to do anything in support of their clients. So, Arlo Guthrie cut a public service announcement for motorcycle safety. To promote awareness of endangered species, Rob convinced William Shatner to ride a killer whale at Sea World and to spend time with Koko the “talking” gorilla. He would pick up the phone and, the next thing you know, we would all be on a ferry boat in the San Francisco Bay listening to legendary folk singer Brownie McGhee sing and tell stories about Woody Guthrie.

He got Ted Turner to fund a TV series based on the Global 2000 report, the first comprehensive report on climate change, which Rob worked on, of all places, in the White House. He had formed Conservationists for Carter when little-known Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976.

He tried to save the Stanislaus River from being dammed, one of his few losing campaigns. He fought in court to stop pollution on the California coast and to prevent a Silicon Valley billionaire from claiming private ownership of Martins Beach. He was a key figure in a San Mateo County measure to ban onshore facilities in support of offshore oil drilling. A generation later, he was a key figure in the campaign to approve the creation of two tunnels at Devil’s Slide. He was working to save the planet right up to his death, promoting a proposal to build a reef in Pacifica to reduce damage from outsized waves.

Saving the ocean, he said, was “planetary patriotism.”

He wrote about all of it in his memoir, “A Surfer in the White House.” You should get it.

He did all this with the steadfast support of Diana, the love of his life, who was as private as Rob was public. She was an accomplished landscape artist and an early adapter of integrating California native plants into her designs and shunned the use of chemical pesticides and leaf blowers.

In his activism, in his marriage, in his life, he was a model to us all — full of life and love, cheerful, hopeful, involved.

The ocean is a little cleaner because he was here, the sun a little dimmer with his passing.